Scars
by ACleverName
Summary: Based upon Leroux. We know Erik lived in and helped build the Opera during the Commune. Follows the experiences of a nurse sequestered in the rising Opera building. Has been shot with a healthy dose of Kay.
1. Chapter 1

SCARS

"Ah, God! What trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms."

--Herman Melville

1.

It was the second week of the siege in the winter of 1870 when I first arrived at the Opéra. The cold, gaunt hand of misery had spread its fingers over Paris, and all I can remember thinking about was how hungry I was. Food, while in my life never a luxury, had not been meager before that fateful year, and I had always had a guilty need for things of which the pâtisseries were now in short supply. Yes, it was hunger and cold that dominated everyone's thoughts in those days.

Fortunately, there was gratitude in my heart to temper the terrible suffering I had seen before me in the past few weeks. One has to be glad when a narrow escape from death has just filled the horizon! Terror and gratitude were interspersed amongst my blind perceptions of the day when the Prussian shell landed on the Hôtel-Dieu.

It was well-known that the Prussians--increasing our French sentiment of bitter hatred toward Germans--found grim strategic delight in targeting hospitals and orphanages. Babette--my friend and fellow nurse--and I had been witness to enough of these exceedingly bloody and doleful wreckages in our servitude to the hospitals those past few weeks. So it should not, perhaps, have taken us by surprise that day when we were talking down the old cobblestoned rue with crates of supplies--make-shift bandages apprehended from our pleadings with wealthy _grandes dames _as well as medicines.

It truly must have been a stroke of God's mercy that we two were not caught in the blazing, unkind blow that had left so many Parisians dead already. In shock we gazed at the smoke from far down the street, knowing already in our hearts that the worst had indeed transpired. The first impulse, of course, was to rush to the charred and broken-down remains of the building and administer help to those caught in the blast. Upon coming closer to the scene, however, a building panic arose. When we saw victims rushing madly past us away from the flames, ensuing terror gripped us and we began to flee, too, carried off with the throngs in any direction to relieve the utterly petty but inherently human emotion of fear.

Babette might have gone back. Her fear was of the quiet kind that remains wild-eyed at every instant and moves only if forced. But I admit I had not the saintly spirit to contend so compassionately with misfortune. So I ran. It was Babette, however, who suggested the Opéra. In the midst of quiet, shaking sobs, she said, "The Opéra, Manon . . . it's a government building--they may have need of nurses . . ."

We were near the still-uncompleted building, so I assented in the fever of the moment. I truly did not know much of Charles Garnier's architectural offspring. I had come to Paris little more than a year before that October and all of that time had been spent in hospitals. I was barely able to recognize it as Babette and I continued to race down the Boulevard des Capucines, our hands still conjoined over the foolish box of medical supplies we shared between us. The half-finished façade of the squat, square building almost passed me by.

Babette pulled at my sleeve and rushed up to a door, pounding away with her industrious little fists. How she knew which door to go to is utterly beyond my understanding, but I did not question her intuition. Presently--and perhaps a bit miraculously--the door was answered. As the building had been requisitioned for the storage of government supplies, I was unsurprised to be accosted with a soldier of some rank.

"Sisters of charity?"

I quickly spoke up with more calm than I felt. "The Hôtel-Dieu has been shelled, Monsieur."

The soldier's look was one of puzzlement. "But we have no wounded here. This building is for supplies only. I have but a small contingent of men stationed within."

"No doubt, but consider, if you will, Monsieur," I interceded with boldness born of desperation, "the shelling is only to get worse within the next weeks. It may be very convenient indeed to have two nurses easily within your power."

It was the most I had said to anyone all day, but the soldier's gaze was focused on Babette, her teeth chattering in both cold and fear. Babette could have been the symbol of the waning France. Before I had known her, I believed she had been very healthy and flushed with flesh and life. Now she was unnaturally thin and her blonde hair, when it escaped from beneath the cap and veil she wore, was sparse and colorless. The ungainly results of the fall of the first bloody shells shown in her stricken, unhappy figure.

The strain could not have been so easily reflected in me. I had never been beautiful, though not necessarily unpleasant to look upon. At the age of thirty compared to Babette's twenty-one years, maturity had hardened features already prone to a morose appearance. I was slight and dark, a sign of my country upbringing, in contrast to Babette, _la Parisienne. _

Perhaps the soldier took pity on the state of France reflected in my companion. In any case, he relented and helped us inside the building. Into the room which would one day be the auditorium for the Opéra he led us. We were greatly astonished at the size of the building and the dimness of the light within.

"What is that you're carrying?" the soldier inquired.

"Bandages and medicines," Babette murmured quietly.

"Not food?" remarked the solider in a mordant style entirely befitting a man grown old before his time. "How naïve an action for two young ladies who have no friends in the world."

"I beg your pardon, but I was most sure the good fighting men _de la patrie _would not mind sharing their provisions with two humble nurses."

The soldier smiled as he lit a cigar quietly, the smoke causing Babette to cough weakly. Dusting off his gnarled hands on his faded officer's uniform, the soldier stood at attention and saluted. "I am Captain Gérard Collier, at your service."

"This is Sœur Marie Babette," I replied as Babette dropped a novice's curtsy, "and I am Manon Lapaine."

Collier's eyebrows furrowed like two distressed charcoal cinders. "So you are not a nun?" he questioned blankly.

"No . . . not exactly," I murmured.

Wearing the same dark-colored gown and pinned white apron as the sisters of charity who had left their convents to attend the civilians caught in this siege, I was easily able to fade into the persona of a nun. Yet, like the American woman Clara Barton who was on the German border as I stood in the Garnier Opéra, I typified myself as an independent relief worker. I had been nursing in the Hôtel-Dieu ever since I had entered Paris, not at the advent of the siege. Oh, I had once been as convent-bound as Babette. But when I blankly informed the Mother Superior I had no intention of fulfilling my vows and becoming a bride of Christ, there were not many options. I was twenty-nine and marriage out of the question, so I came to Paris to be nearer to my brother. I did not want to burden him with the added expense of a spinster who could not earn her keep, so nursing seemed the most practical solution. I was given a very small allowance and meals for free, so my career began.

Collier seemed to accept this complicated answer with some hesitancy, but as custom was not to doubt the word of a lady, he at last gave in. "Come with me," he commanded in weary tones owing to a man consumed by the darkness of what would be known as "the terrible year."

Babette and I obeyed at once, rushing to keep up with Collier's defensive gait. He moved rapidly through the deserted hallways, as empty and strange as the belly of a hungry beast. It was only the outer shell of the building, which was not at all completed, and the inner workings were so rife with shadows it was enough to give an impressionable mind a feeling of extreme uneasiness. The half-finished carvings of nymphs and the immortals of opera (who they were I had no idea) did not seek to reassure, only to dishearten with their open, glassy eyes, too much like death for any but the most profane not to shiver.

Collier opened several doors and led us through to what would one day be the principal singers' foyer, large and spacious but not nearly as fashionable as the slanted room which would become the _foyer de la danse. "_You may stay here," he said simply.

Babette and I looked at each other, at the empty expanse of the unfinished room, unable to utter a response. There was nothing but wooden floors leading to corridors.

Collier seemed to sense our confusion and coolly took a lantern from a nail on a doorway, lighting it with a tinder. He looked at us, still clinging to the basket of supplies. "We can give you standard issue blankets and bedding, if you like."

Instilled with the propriety of the weaker sex, I could only scowl at the idea of "standard issue" anything. I knew the state of the country at the moment and should have been grateful for anything--I was alive, wasn't I? That hateful, uncharitable, unwomanly feeling clutched again at my weak breast, and I bit my lip in shame.

Endeavoring to look at Captain Collier with complete humility and gratitude, I said, "We thank you for your consideration, Captain."

Collier stare at me for a long moment, emotions remaining unfathomable in his bloodshot eyes. He glanced back at the mute figure of Babette. He then nodded. "Come with me, please. I should like you to know the depth of this place you're calling home."

Briskly Collier walked his unrelenting step as I followed, attempting to preserve some kind of maidenly dignity. Babette straggled behind like a child. We ducked down through more archways and doors, back near the original door through which we came, though the bewildering labyrinthe quality of this future opera house made me question the sanity of this architect Garnier.

We stopped at what I believe would have been the wings of the future stage, to a well-lit and cozy--though perhaps dingy-looking--room. Inside, uniformed men loitered, some perched at central square table in rickety chairs, playing cards animatedly.

"Attention!" hollered the Captain. The men rushed to throw down their cards--taking precautions, I saw, to hide their hands from the other players--and stand in the edgy obedience of men in a starving city.

"Two sisters of charity will be living among us," Collier declared, sauntering up and down the aisle between his men. "They are here to nurse the wounded, and that is all. You will treat them with all the proper respect that is due to ladies. Is that understood?"

A rapid, loud, "Yes, sir!" followed--so sharp it reminded me of a firing squad. The soldiers looked at Babette and I, curiosity being the only emotion I could discern. Quietly each edge of the room peered at the other, as if sizing up those comrades one was thrown together with in the hour of the most dire struggle, the most critical facet of life. Could we trust each other? was the inevitable question that poured forth from a dozen eyes. Ah yes, propriety was the marker of civilization--but the virtue seemed ill at ease here in the loneliness of the Opéra.

Collier turned and left the room, motioning for us to follow. We did, and he continued on, this time dipping down a staircase that seemed to lead into even more impenetrable shadows as we entered what I would learn was the first cellar. Below the stage.

"I have a contingent of men stationed down here as well," Collier murmured. "This is where we store the provisions."

He sharply turned the corner, opening a door and peering through. "Salted horsemeat," he explained, gazing at the darkened room with slabs of meat hung from hooks in the ceiling. Babette coughed and pressed her hand over her mouth.

Collier shook his head. "Revolting, isn't it? Now you see this is no place for the delicacy of women." He seemed to sneer as he closed the door and began to walk away. A short little flame burst below my ribs--a desperate one that begged for survival.

"You live in Paris," I called after the Captain. "You must know death is only an inch away. You need not take any extra pains for our 'delicacy.' We are trying to live. We are prepared to do whatever it takes to do so."

It was a very unladylike thing to say. Meekness and propriety were in Collier's right; our stay would be very impertinent indeed. But only on the brink of disaster did Paris realize impertinence was life.

Collier sighed. Babette sighed. I could not tell if she agreed with me. Still, Collier wearily said, "Well then, come on."

He led us to a closet where liters of wine was stored and then to another large room where more men playing cards were brought to attention and made to take the same vows as before.

As Collier, Babette, and I began up the stairs again, Collier's tone suddenly became grave. "You must promise me, Mesdemoiselles, that you will go no lower than this first cellar."

Babette and I looked at each other in bewilderment. We did not dare voice our confusion, but Collier went on. "There are five cellars under the Opéra. The substage section has been carved out of underground rock and there is a lake-"

"A lake!" I exclaimed.

He looked at me. "I have been told. None of my men have ever seen it."

"The descent is so precarious?" I questioned.

"Yes. It's very dangerous. Tunnels, passageways . . . it's an endless world. You must not go down."

"Of course we won't," I said.

Collier seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Catching Babette's gaze, he added impishly, "The men say there is a ghost who lives below."

"A g-ghost?" Babette asked.

"Come now, Mademoiselle," Collier admonished, "aren't you a good Catholic?"

Babette gulped and flushed, and Collier smiled for the first time. "Come along. You must be exhausted."

However, I lingered for a moment in the first cellar. I perceived it was not incautious to believe in ghosts in this place and time. The sounds of the creaking stage could almost be interpreted as sighs. In my memory, a faint violin music began to play and a sudden darting shadow made me turn. No, but I was alone still.

Yes, alone.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

In our government-issued blankets upon the cold floor, Babette and I spent our first night in the Opéra. We made our first meal of the salted horsemeat sitting at a table of tired, nervous, anxious soldiers. When I said the blessing, I saw Babette's eyelids were drooping; she was too exhausted to take a drink of her wine. It had indeed been a wearying day.

It was October, and already I knew the winter would be a harsh one. With only our utilitarian robes for warmth, Babette and I huddled together in the corner of the singers' foyer, grateful for the lanterns Collier had given us. A stretch of canvas had been hung up over a piece of wire and tacked to the wall, large enough for our comfortable resting.

Babette fell asleep soon enough and I was surprised to find myself following very closely. Hours passed in the deepness of rest. But then I was awake again in the dark of night, and no matter how I struggled, sleep would not come. Peace would not come. Peace would never come . . .

At last I gave up. I let my eyes flap open, perceiving only darkness. Babette's calm, repetitive breathing only caused me more agitation. Blind in the impermeable absence of light, I nevertheless slunk out of our canvas tent, dragging with me my pallet and blankets. The night was very chill and as I struggled to light the tinder, I shivered in the black. I let the flame burn low and quietly, leaving only a tiny firefly light by which to see. There wasn't anything to see, was there? Merely shadow to distort my already shuddering visions.

For weeks I had been waking up in this fashion. For weeks sleep had eluded me. There would be periods of desperate deep slumber and then I would be awake again, staring at the ceiling for unending periods of time. It was not simple restlessness or an expanded, original mind painfully awake.

It was the things I had seen in the last months of my stay in Paris as a nurse. I would be forever examining my fingernails for traces of iron red blood, a crimson banner to the lives that had passed through my hands. It was always their blood, always the dirt and sweat and blood that caked onto my white apron. It, too, was always sloughed again in scrubbing bleaches to remove the endless spatterings. Every patient's reaction came hurtling back and haunted me in midnight hallucinations, like those the prophetic Sibyl saw in her glassy eyes.

Oh, they had clasped my hands while choking in the final stages of consumption, the blood collecting with spittle. In panicked shock I had tried to pull away, but then the other nurses were watching, regarding me with distrust. So I let myself be caught in those icy hands that leapt out of the grave.

There was the first time I had seen the shelling victims. The scars and sores of lepers could not have been worse than the flood of blood, the soaking pool that threatened to drown the victim. From underneath this mass was one streaming eyeball, the other a bloodied socket with sinews hanging grotesquely.

Immediately I had gotten a feeling of sickness in my stomach. But I spilled out the bandages obediently and wrapped up what limbs I could find within the scarlet inflammations. As usual, there was a shortage of doctors, and as the medic passed, eh said, "This one's going to need the fingers cut off."

I looked at the lump of the hand, where the pinky and third finger hung on by a thread of skin. The doctor handed me the surgical knife. I followed his eyes in shock. "Doctor," I cried in rising panic, "shouldn't you--?"

"No time," he murmured.

Biting the insides of my cheeks, I asked, "I haven't any morphine left."

"Then do without."

So off came the two fingers. I was shaking as I bandaged the stump of the hand up again and proceeded to another victim.

Another day another doctor had called me to the bedside of one woman, also caught in a shelling blast. The doctor held her back, as she rose hysterically from the bed, screaming and shrieking gibberish that always mentioned "the children, the children!" I later learned she came from one of the orphanages shelled.

"Nurse!" the doctor cried as I rushed forward. "Morphine, now!" I obediently performed that familiar act of pressing the needle into the liquid and drawing it back. As I pushed back the woman's sleeve, she suddenly turned on me and grasped my apron with both hands. Frightened, I tried to unhook her fingers as she raved at me. At last I managed to slam the needle into her open arm. She fell back, quivered, and disappeared into the brief good feelings I knew the drug would bring.

I have already explained why I chose nursing out of the few careers offered, but there was an added advantage to my choice. The sight of blood had never made me faint. Oh, of course it caused the spittle in my mouth to gather menacingly as my stomach threatened to capsize its meager contents--but I never fainted, as was proper for a true lady to do. Never having known the sentiments of the nobility, who were not required to join the relief effort, I had been brought up in a manner suiting my prospects. Daintiness was replaced with usefulness, and complete femininity with versatility.

But I was punished with a much more insidious ailment. Nearly every time I paused for a moment to gather my thoughts, there they would come again--the images plastered on the inside of my head that mercilessly tormented me. Thus I craved activity, and the idleness that sleep brought could only mean more visions.

In the still of the night, I gathered the blanket about me and sat up, thinking angrily I would get no more sleep that night. Well, neither would I lie around in inefficient inactivity. There was one duty I could perform and now, in the dark, would be the most opportune time to do it.

I had taken my hair down from the strict coronet I wore under my flared cap and spent a moment to brush it out of my face as I got to my feet, holding the lamp in one hand. I scuttled to the door through which Collier had last exited and determined to find what I was looking for as unobtrusively as possible.

Through the corridors I moved slowly, quietly, opening doors and peering with general apprehension in every direction. It was very cold on this October night, and the blanket bundled up around me created a prosaic swishing of cloth as I moved along. Still, my ears were in some doubt that the blanket was the only thing making noise in the night.

Swallowing slowly, I gathered my courage and shone the lantern about me with a shuddering hand. I was slightly near-sighted but my ears made up for it, so as I held my breath, I was almost positive I heard something moving near me.

My suspicions were confirmed when I felt a swift soft brush on my side as I turned a corner. Momentarily losing all sense, I let out a yelp and dropped the lantern. In the dark my poor eyesight could not immediately discern what had happened. Then Captain Collier's stern voice was crying, "Mademoiselle Lapaine, what are you doing?"

I stumbled the retrieve the lantern, mumbling, "Oh, Captain, pardon me, I--"

"What are you doing?" he repeated breathlessly. Looking at him, I concluded two things: he had been on duty on one of those lonely shifts at the midnight hour; and that he was nearly as startled as I.

"I—well--I beg your pardon. I could not sleep."

Rapidly wonder gave way to fury. "You should not be wandering around at this time of night. Surely you did not do this at the hospital."

I bit my lip. "No, Captain--but I was looking . . ." I stopped. It was one of those matters of delicacy I had proclaimed that day did not exist.

"Yes, Mademoiselle?"

I was silent. Collier made a guttural sound of exasperation. "Tell me, woman, what it is you want!"

"It is a matter of some privacy, Captain," I murmured, flushing, giving him what I hoped was an enlightening look in the midst of my discomfort.

"Oh." He looked quite bemused. "I'm sorry, Mademoiselle. If you will come this way."

And that was how I found the privy in the Opéra!

The next two weeks were full of activity for Babette and I. During a lull in the shelling, we left the shelter of the Opéra to see what had become of the rest of the nurses. I had written a letter, which I posted the first day we left the safety of our new home, to my former Abbess explaining our situation. Some time later we received a reply from an unknown doctor congratulating us for still being alive and advising us to remain where we were. It was true Captain Collier was none too thrilled by the news, for I think he half expected us to never come back the first time we left.

I sent a second letter, this time to my brother Jean, who owned a boarding house on the Left Bank, closer to the shelling. He had reason to be nervous, but I knew he worried more for my safety than his own. I had not seen him for some time before I had been dislodged from the Hôtel-Dieu, but if the news had spread, he would be fearful. So I had prayed my letter would reach him. I cared for Jean deeply, because he was my only living sibling and my only close relative. My mother was still alive and with her third husband--after our father, they seemed to go fast--but I had not seen her for several years. Jean was, in this year of 1870, almost twenty-one--very young, yet strangely mature in his double career as a board-keeper and cartoonist for the paper _Charivari. _Because of the Siege, Jean and cartoonists like him were given fresh material every day and the strict censoring of French government was lifted. So he was, in a way, happy.

And so was I. The activity, as I said, kept Babette and I constantly busy and allowed me to sleep easier at night. I did not wander the corridors anymore, as afraid of Collier's anger as I was of anything else. While on one outing, Babette and I bought what little we could--warmer clothes for ourselves and more varied food than the horsemeat rations. Collier told me, amused, of the Zoo in the Bois being emptied for the rich. Ah, I thought, only famine could bring the powerful to their knees. Now at the end of October, starvation was gripping all, and a rat was a good night's meal and a horse a feast for several days.

Babette and I were also occupied with sewing the soldiers' uniforms and making them foot bundles to wear when their socks wore out. But aside from a black eye sustained in a fight, we'd had no experience with our calling as nurses.

They came the same day as the first snowstorm. Bitter cold embraced Paris like a sinister bed fellow, and I imagined the population on the streets wrapped in the never-ending torrent of snowdrifts, especially my brother. The Prussians, whom one would think would wait until the snow had passed over them, gathered themselves up to shell the Left Bank once more.

No doubt the cold facilitated the panicked flee toward the Opéra and not closer to one of the field hospitals. Unheated and dark, the building was stilled as Collier took Babette and I from our singers' foyer to the _foyer de la danse _where three patients waited. Emboldened into action, we quickly moved to play the intricate ballet of what had become almost second nature. The first two men were routine burn victims. We cleaned and bandaged their wounds with almost cold efficiency, and I imagined abstractly how cool the sterile bandages must feel against the hot, bubbled skin on their faces and arms.

The third patient, however, had been struck and pinned under a falling piece of masonry and from the angle from which his arm hung, I knew it was broken. Assessing the half-dazed man's arm, I found the bone was broken near the elbow. Collier, who was watching us anxiously, asked, "What can you do for him?"

"The bone has to be set," I said.

At this, the man began to shake convulsively. Discerning the cause at once, I nodded to Babette to bring the crate. I opened it and pulled out the familiar morphine needle. I reached into the crate to fill the needle with the liquid sedative as Babette grimly held down the man. After the injection he fell calmly upon the bedding and I readied myself for the task of setting the bone in the man's displaced arm.

Then the sudden heady moment of needy insanity was over, and the Opéra staff returned to normal. Collier saw to it the convalescing patients were set up in bunks with the soldiers while Babette and I cleaned up the usual mess of blood and fluid that followed war around like a trained dog. As I folded the clean bandages back up into a neat pile in the crate and gathered the soiled ones for disposal, I noticed the supply of morphine seemed strangely low.

I counted the little vials of the precious stuff and was puzzled to find, instead of one vial missing, there were three! I was absolutely sure of this loss--I had counted the vials the first day we arrived and they now numbered three less than there should have been, after that day's administration to our patient.

Babette was washing her hands in a metal basin. "You didn't take any morphine for the burn victim, did you?" I asked.

She paused, then shook her head. "Why do you ask, Manon?"

"You don't suppose Collier could have taken some?"

"What use would the Captain have for morphine?" Babette asked.

I shook my head. "I must speak to him about this."

Dutifully the tired man paused, looking at me in curiosity. He was a fairly tall man, yet I felt he was wearied by my sobering height. He was required to look down at Babette, who was of an acceptable feminine height, but gazing straight into my eyes seemed a bit much for the poor man. In any case, he took a step backward. "Mademoiselle?"

I sighed. An inquiry into the habits of his men would not be welcome. "It's about . . . the morphine."

For a moment he was silent. Then he burst out in a dry, frightening laugh. "You'll have to be a little more specific, Mademoiselle." He chuckled. "So grave, are we? Is it money you need?"

I felt myself flushing slightly in his nongallant teasing. I should have been accustomed to Collier's capricious humor, but I confess his reactions still baffled me. "I do beg you would be serious," I muttered sharply. "I would like you to investigate among your men if any of them have taken two vials of our morphine. Two vials are missing."

He leaned back slightly, his boots making a hollow sound on the floor. "You believe my men may have taken your morphine?"

I nodded, lowering my eyes. "I hope you are not offended. You must see how narrowed my suspicions must be when we are living in a building with a finite population."

"You forget the ghost," Collier added humorlessly.

"Ghosts have no need of morphine," I said.

Collier looked as though he might dispute this claim, but he only put his hands in his uniform pockets in a gesture of resignation. "I will ask my men, Mademoiselle. I promise you nothing." And away he sped, aloof and distant. For a definite moment, I wondered about that ridiculous ghost Collier kept bringing up. Did he imagine it was going to frighten me? I had my own spirits to contend with. One more specter in the cellars couldn't make much difference.


	3. Chapter 3

3.

Perhaps a week later, I received the greatest joy since I had realized my life had been saved that second week in September. My brother Jean wrote me a letter.

It was undated, so I could not be sure how long it had taken to reach me. The address was simple enough: "Please deliver to Mlle Manon Lapaine at the new Opéra." The intrepid little missive had clung to life and made it all the way into my hands.

_I am well, _he wrote, _so do not trouble yourself on my account. Business has been poor because of the bombings, but I am comfortable on my savings._

_I am overjoyed to hear you are safely situated at the Opéra. I am sending you, along with this letter, a copy of _Charivari, _for I am sure you must be completely without worldly communication. If you like, I will send you my paper as often as I can to keep you updated on the city's gossip. _

_Your ever-loving brother,_

_Jean_

What a refreshing voice was Jean's! Even amid the war, so good-humored. In the place of Collier's grating sarcasm and Babette's vapid quiet, Jean's one letter was enough to make me smile so long my mouth's muscles reprimanded me wordlessly. I was lonely; I hadn't realized it until then. Life without Jean had been too terrible, and I saw it only then, gazing at his cartoon, so cleverly drawn in _Charivari. _

Still, I, who knew my brother so well, could discern his cartoons, like those of the other satirists, were strangely sad and aching. Under the pseudonym of Toli, my brother's somber cartoon reflected the ideas of Daumier and all the rest--French gaiety was gone, replaced by the heartache of a helpless nation.

I was soon to be met with a far more personal heartbreak, one that made the cartoons in the steady influx of papers my brother sent cringe in comparison.

The patients healed quickly and were set out on their ways; two were soldiers and opted to remain posted at the Opéra. The third, a civilian, left us and attempted to regain what life he had left. Who knows what became of him? During this time, there was little activity. The war seemed at a painful standstill, Paris neck-deep in shelling and a bitter cold creeping upon everyone. It had been so long since I'd had a decent meal that had not consisted of the horse meat and old wine and maybe a heel of bread. The only kindness in life were Jean's papers, offering solace and hope that this war might yet be won.

Babette spoke to me less and less, and it appeared she was unhappy with her current post. When she did speak, it was of her discontent and wish to leave the Opéra. She even spoke of abandoning her vocation. For me this was strange indeed, for never in the several years I'd known her had the girl wanted anything but a convent life of chastity.

Added to this perturbing problem was the unresolved issue of the missing morphine. Collier had questioned his men and none had admitted to taking the morphine; all vehemently denied any theft. Collier was satisfied with this answer, but I still had my doubts. Collier attributed the disappearance--he refused to call it theft--of the morphine to hungry rats who had scuttled over it during the night. I was unconvinced.

And when two more vials had gone missing, I was in a foul temper. The day had been lackluster and cold. I was hungry for sweets (as usual), and Babette had been disturbingly apathetic.

Before the midday dinner, I walked with an angry gait to the backstage area where Collier's men spent their free time, smoking their awful cigars and playing game after game of cards, betting away salaries they would never receive.

It was the first time I had seen Collier play cards, and I watched for a moment as he sat in intense concentration, scratching his sweaty moustache over the cards, his beetle brows furrowed. Really, his appearance was almost comic. If I hadn't been in such an ungainly temper I would not have disturbed this amusing vision.

"I would speak to you, Captain," I declared loudly. The room was sullenly silent for a moment, then the scrape of Collier's chair was followed by a cloud of smoke and Collier muttering. As we walked out, he said, "Mademoiselle Lapaine, again? What can I do for you?"

"I regret to inform you," I said quietly, "that two more vials of morphine have gone missing." I watched his cigar slide in and out, between his fingers, nervous and impatient.

"I assured you," he said, "that it was unwise to pursue this matter any further."

"Yes, sir," I replied, "but we are losing precious war supplies. There could come a day, Captain, when we need the morphine and we will not have it."

He nodded slowly, is eyes edging out from under his brows to look at me with curious hesitancy. "Yes. I suppose you're right. There is nothing I would dislike more than to see a man in pain because of our sloth."

"So you will allow me to question your men?" I piped in eagerly.

He gave me a glacial, silencing look. "Mademoiselle," he snapped, "you see corruption everywhere except within."

My cheeks burned with the sudden shock of his accusation. "Do you think I would take morphine, Captain?" I fumed, veritably shaking with fury.

"Not you," Collier interrupted with irritation. "The girl--Soeur Marie Babette."

Rage overwhelmed me, and I could not control the look of venom from devouring my face as I contemplated the gall of the man to suggest such a thing. "Babette is a sister of charity--a nun, Collier!"

"Haven't you seen her empty eyes? That cocoon of nonchalance she lives in? Do not imagine me ignorant of the drug's effects!" He shrugged apathetically, and I could no longer remain. Irascible, I gathered up my skirt and stormed away without even a polite reply. The insult! The impetus, to accuse Babette of an addiction! It was difficult for me to retain any semblances of sense at all while such incendiary words coursed through my brain.

I rushed to our singers' foyer, determined to confront Babette with this accusation. When I entered, I was at first puzzled because she was nowhere in sight. Even in her disgruntled state, she had never left our quarters without telling me. Panicked that I had let my young charge disappear, I began to call her name.

I was most surprised when my reply was the sound of hysterical female laughter. It was issuing, I realized from inside our canvas tent. Stepping inside, I was shocked and silenced by the sight of Babette laughing insensibly, surrounded by tell-tale signs of Collier's truth: an empty vial and a tourniquet upon her arm.

Sighing in the depth of betrayal, I stole out of the room, taking only my shawl with me. I knew full well there was no place I could go. It was too cold to leave the Opéra, and to go below, to the cellars, was forbidden. Suddenly seized by a disappoint in all mankind; I no longer cared what Collier had said about the cellar. I rushed down to the first one below the stage, discounting, in my despair, the fact the passageway was lit with only one dim lantern.

In the solitude, I sat for a time in simple, cathartic thought. Was this all my life was supposed to be? Mocked by a surly officer who had probably never known happiness of his own and could not allow anyone else that pleasure--nursemaid to a girl who had sacrificed her soul to God and was sullying it with morphine--slave to a war I had never asked for and punished for trying to help, always and forever tormented by the shades I had let die . . .

I was alone, it seemed. Collier disdained me, Babette thought it decent to deceive me utterly; my brother lived in mortal peril far away; parents conceivably gone forever; and never to know love or peace.

I should have wept. But I could not make the tears come. Even in that hole in the ground, shivering in the cold of late October, I felt under the yoke of human vision, unalone after all--as though a creature--good or evil, I could not say--was peering markedly down my shoulder and wondering how I had become so weak. "Live!" this unnamed shadow shrieked, filling my bloodstream with the warm feeling of survival. The war would end, I told myself steadily, sooner or later. _Then you will never be away from Jean again._

Comfort was the lunar tide that swept over me, prompting me to regain my spirits and live once more. So up I trudged, back to the stage level, and back to the singers' foyer.

Babette was sitting on a chair, innocently darning a stocking. I saw her glance up at me, and the brightness of her eyes convinced me the drug had worn off. Wearily I unpinned my hair piece from my hair and folded it up into a pile. Babette looked at me and smiled, then realized what my cold eyes meant; then her smile dropped completely, and she swallowed guiltily.

"It's not as if I've done anything wrong," she said peevishly.

I knelt beside her with a look of shock and pity. "Don't you know what morphine does to you, child? That feeling of power is just an illusion, and when it's gone you'll do anything to have it again."

She twisted violently away. "Don't you tell me I can't have a bit of happiness now and then!" she cried wildly. "Rich people pay to forget--can't I forget sometimes? I've done a lot more for this country than the rich, haven't I?" she was pacing, well-nigh hysterical. She looked at me in despair. "Manon--aren't you ever overwhelmed? Tempted to forget all the anguish?"

I swallowed--yes, I was well-acquainted with anguish. "Yes, but you've taken a vow--"

"Oh, who are you to preach to me?" she interrupted fiercely. "You were not forced to the convent by your parents--you came because no man would ever want you!"

Her hand instantly clamped over her mouth in regret. She tapped my shoulder in distress. "Oh, Manon, I'm sorry--I didn't mean that . . .!"

For the moment I ignored her. A tinge of anger welled up in me as I considered how true her blunt words were. Yes, the reason for my self-propelled launch into nursing was prompted by an accident. I was fifteen or sixteen, at an early but conceivably marriageable age. In essence, the cart was going too fast, it tipped over, my abdomen was caught under the wheel . . . I lived, of course, but not without scars--and the incurable inability to bear children. I had seen several doctors over the course of my life, and their diagnoses had been unanimous.

I could have still married, I suppose; I could have deceived a man into giving me his fortune and patronage. But the thought of the wedding night, on the bridal bed, and having to confess complete dysfunction . . . Hardly a subject suited for discussion, but it always lurked in the back of my mind. And the torture that I would never have a child of my own--it had been enough to easily send me running to a society of devout women.

The years as a girl studying at the convent went on, and I had growing confidence that I could be happier--and make some use of myself--by abandoning my orders. Perhaps in my selfish heart there was a greedy hope that I might find a love that would transcend my flaws, but this was a craving easily dismissed.

I realized, at length, that Babette was talking to me again, in a supplicant and penitent voice. "Manon . . . I only took two vials--just two--I swear by all that's holy, I only had two!"

She was tugging at my gown so hard the straight pins fell out and my apron drooped. It took me a moment to realize what she was saying exactly. Then it struck me--if she had taken only two, then two were still missing! I shook her shoulders until she looked up at me. "Are you absolutely certain, Babette?"

Her look was suddenly sober and God-fearing. "Yes. I am sure."

I let go of her forcefully and considered for a moment. If she was telling the truth, then perhaps Collier was lying to me. Someone else had to have taken the morphine. Drugs, I was sure, just didn't disappear!

"Do you know who took the other two?" I asked her quietly. She shook her head. "Can you curb this habit?" I whispered. "Do you have the will to stop using the morphine?"

She blinked. She swallowed. She looked down at her fidgeting hands, then back at me. "Yes," she said in a resolved, though almost inaudible voice.

"Good," I said curtly. "Then I will tell no one about this."

I got up to leave and she asserted in a tiny voice, "But Captain Collier knows . . ."

I inwardly cursed the man. "I will have to persuade him to stay silent, then."

Fortunately Collier needed no persuasion on the account of silence. We did not mention the morphine again that first week in November, when the snows came. Ah, Paris adrift and lost in the blankets of snow and the ice flows that soon closed up the Seine. The situation grew grimmer as starvation and cold forced the city to her knees under the heel of the advancing Germans. Frostbite was all Babette and I seemed to treat. Aside from this, we knitted countless woolens for the soldiers and kept ourselves entertained by the news from my brother and his merciless inundation of fearful cartoons. More and more mordant became the wit of the satirists, with all the cynicism that comes of war. The occasional notes from Jean said that while he was, for once, making a fortune, the real thing he lacked was food. When I responded he could come to the Opéra and have some horse flesh, he declined the offer.

I had secretly decided upon a plan to catch the morphine thief. I brought the crate of morphine to the opening of the canvas tent and resolved to stay awake to seize the clever miscreant. For some time, the plan seemed a poor strategy. Then one night . . . It really was, I suppose, by chance that I even made the discovery. Even I, the insomniac nurse, could not stay awake all night. But it happened that night it was so cold in our desolate canvas tent that I was forced to contemplate existence longer than usual. My excellent hearing was proven a veritable asset when I thought I discerned the faint rustling of cloth. I looked first at Babette, but she was soundly asleep, lying, prone, totally without movement.

Then--the soft but unmistakable sound of the crate being opened. I sat up quickly and peeked my head out of the tent--just in time to see a shadow pause and begin running. Determined to triumph, I grabbed the lantern I had left at my bedside and started off in pursuit. The poor light aided the lengthy shadow in escaping, but I resolved to follow. Squinting my eyes painfully to keep up with dashing, mellifluous shape, I was soon astonished at the speed of the being. Having shunned a corset like most of my order, I was unheeded in my feverish pace, yet this shadow was almost preternatural in its speed and agility. I watched in awe as the barely discernible creature melded in and out of the darkness like a disappearing and reappearing specter--ah, I thought, with sudden wryness, so this is Collier's ghost.

Insensible of where I was going, only following the capricious and supernaturally endowed being which was at once a ghost and a morphine thief, I realized all at once in this sudden and rapid flight that I was in the second cellar of the Opéra stage. Below and beyond anything I'd ever ventured before. The momentary confusion caused me to pause and the quick, merciless shadow took the opportunity to disappear completely. Regaining my senses, I turned a corridor, panting, looking at the foreboding steps that gestured downward, as if into a mausoleum at the base of a great house.

Gripping the lantern purposely in my hand, I contemplated journeying further into that darkness. What if the information Collier given about the lake was true? I was suddenly possessed with a desire to see the bowels of Paris. I knew the catacombs had been sealed at the advent of the siege, yet I was sure the level of the lowest cellar--if my impressions proved correct--would be analogous to those damp hallways of the catacombs. Then I began to wonder--why had the shadow descended so far? Surely it must have known the cellars eerily well to be able to navigate the stairs and twists in path so effortlessly. Indeed, this underground empire would have been a prudent hiding place to crawl to, especially in the midst of this war. Perhaps I really_ had _come to meet the whispered ghost Collier and the other soldiers touted. If this fictitious ghost, did, in fact, reside below, to venture into his domain might be unwise. Better to come again when he was lulled into false security, in the day and with National Guard soldiers in the wings to sniff him out.

So I returned to the world of light, rescued from the purgatory of my own curiosity and revenge. And the next day, after a restless night of planning and seething, imagining the triumph of lifting the sodden blame from Babette's young shoulders, I confronted Collier directly. I caught him in the back of the _foyer de danse _in front of a broken mirror washing in a metal bowl. He was bending over the cold water, dressed only in his shirt-sleeves, his menacing straight razor balanced precariously in his left hand, a ball of fluffy white cream in his other.

When he looked up at the mirror, I saw his expression change to instant disapproval. This was slightly off-putting, but I remained, my hands folded demurely though my heart raged inside. When he turned around, the white feathery liquid still tinged over his upper lip and his half shaved whiskers, giving his strained, ireful eyes a comic touch. Still clutching the razor in his hand, he approached slowly. "Mademoiselle Lapaine. Early to rise, I see." His voice was sharp and unhappy. I could already tell he was in a strangely dangerous mood. I'd never seen him this angry before and I had the impression that he, like I, had not received the ordinate amount of sleep.

"I will be brief, Captain," I said shortly, taken aback, watching with slight awe the trembling blade in his left hand. "I have found the morphine thief."

He stared at me without a reaction. "Yes. The poor girl. Have you put a stop to it?"

I looked down remembering suddenly I was at this man's toilette and how indecent it would have been deemed among society. "No," I replied coldly. "I mean someone else--I followed him last night. He came to our very bed without making a sound--really, an experienced thief, I must say."

"Wait a moment," Collier interrupted, wiping his face on a grimy towel. "You followed someone--last night?" He eyed me skeptically.

"Yes," I said. "I was waiting awake, and I heard someone come near, so I took the lantern and followed. But I lost him in the cellars, so I must request--"

"The cellars?" he questioned with grim fury, peering at me through thunder cloud-capped eyes.

I realized my mistake at once, biting my lip and looking down with soft fear. "I believe I told you," the Captain went on with a careful, terrifyingly satin voice, "that you were not allowed to go down below the stage. Not only for your own safety, but so that my men and I might be spared the unhappy task of going down to collect your remains."

I reacted to the harsh words as if struck. I took a cautious step backwards, reflecting uneasily that Collier was still holding the razor and advancing. "I have been more than civil to you renegade nuns and fulfilled all of your ridiculous requests! But it is not to be borne when you disobey strict orders designed for the defense of the government and the country!"

He was raging insensibly now , and I pondered if this Collier was indeed the same on I had met a month ago. "No need for such language," I admonished, backing away, gulping, staring at the shiny silver blade . . .

"This is a war, woman!" he roared, suddenly grabbing my shoulder mercilessly. I pulled away, crying out in distress, pressing myself against the wall in supplicating, frightened terror.

He dropped the razor and turned away, raking his hands back through his hair. "Pardon me," he said hoarsely and turned away. My eyes wide and unsure, I rushed from the room.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Thank you for all the comments. I appreciate your taking the time to read this.

4.

I had to stop before I reached the singers' foyer, overcome as I was. Trying desperately to regain my breath, I paused and pressed my back against a wall of masonry, clasping my hands tightly. My shoulders still stung from Collier's unrelenting grip, and my heart, beating in the silence of another abandoned winter day, shuddered in my heavy chest.

What had happened? I wondered. What had made a basically decent man snap? I recalled, with a chill, what he had said to me: "This is a war, woman!" I knew from prior experience Collier's wryness was an attempt to alleviate some hidden grief that the war only prolonged. The news from the south was bad—in _Charivari, _I had read the citizens' armies were being repeatedly beaten back by the Germans.

I moved to walk once more around the familiar corner to the home our singers' foyer had become and was stopped by the sight of a man standing resolutely in my path.

I jumped back a little, but refrained from crying out simply because I could not. The man seemed to know quite well that under no circumstances could I make any noise; he reveled in the knowledge, as if thinking it was he, himself, who kept me silent-as if his startling and pitless eyes—grey, with a wild tinge of yellow—kept my throat in an invisible vice. He was bewilderingly tall, completely out of place in the blunt, squat corridor that he dominated. His thin, spindly frame only accentuated this unnatural tallness, causing his strange and solemn figure to seem to rise to a height to rival the highest most twisted of the leafless trees. The clothing he wore, too, could only be a conscious mixture between personal style and an aim to create a mood of Byronic gloom. He was swathed dramatically in a black cloak that absorbed all the light from the grey world I lived in, yet reproduced it in cunning patches of shining light on the folds of the thick material.

Strangely, it was the mask I noticed last.

The mask he wore over most of his face, revealing only his bottom lip to make speech possible and the eyes I have already mentioned. The mask did not startle me as much as it should have, for it seemed I found it more familiar than menacing.

I was just gathering up my senses and wits, yanking them out of the hypnotic grip of the yellow eyes, when the man in the mask stepped forward and gave me an antique dashing little bow. "Mademoiselle," he murmured in a smooth, melodious voice.

I jumped back half a step, and the slight smile on his chalky white lips melted away. The grip of the probing eyes were back on me, forcing me to remain in their dubious range. "What do you want?" I managed to ask.

He shook his head in something like disappointment. "Your manners, Mademoiselle? Introductions first."

I could not imagine that he was being in earnest. The insinuating tone could only be mockery, the expectant look behind the black _papier-mâché _only a further guise for what real feelings this stranger was concealing. A white hand, however, appeared out of the blackness of his cloak, dangerously graceful, long fingers curving with a strange fluidity in a gesture of request.

He stared at me with an odd, unnerving expectancy. "Manon Lapaine," I said finally, hesitatingly curtseying.

He nodded approvingly, joining that marble collection of digits with a mirror image of the same. "Who are you?" I challenged, seeing that he made no offer to give his own name.

"Surely you've heard of the ghost in the cellars, Mademoiselle," the stranger said warmly. "No doubt that fool Collier has acquainted you with my existence." He dropped his arms slowly, letting the black cloak swirl around him in a manner that was truly spectral. Yet—I could not believe . . .

"You're not a ghost," I declared, reaching impetuously forward to take the arm of the yellow-eyed stranger.

It would be the only time I'd see him awkward, when he pulled away with a look of pained surprise, staring at the hand that brushed his cloak with plain revulsion for my audacity. The way he looked at me almost made me mouth the words, "I'm sorry."

"I thought you might find it useful to know," the stranger finally said, shaking himself, "where your morphine has been going."

The shadowy figure in the darkness—the specter in the cellars—the morphine thief—all led back to this strange man in a black mask, claiming to be a ghost. Oh, indeed, war did bring out the strangest people . . . "Why . . .?" I asked in perplexity.

"That is not your concern," the stranger said coldly.

"And yet it must be," I retorted, "for you to speak of it to me." I glared at the man, at his alabaster skin and darting intense gaze from behind the black eyeholes—

"Erik!" I exclaimed suddenly, and the shock and bewilderment apparent in the glistening yellow eyes could hardly exceed my own.

I had seen him before, and his name was Erik. This much I knew.

A year before, I had been living with my brother Jean in the tenements he owned. One misty morning—in those days of plenty before the war—I had been hurrying back to my brother from the market. I would not have even remembered the incident had it not intrigued me later. As I had turned from the street to the little homely door, I saw someone else exiting. Since I generally did not socialize with my brother's tenants, I took no notice of the man—until a chance movement in the stranger's elegant stride allowed me to look upon his face. It was the same mask of black _papier-mâché, _and I stopped for a moment to stare as the stranger went on in his flight, his black cloak streaming behind him, the folds shimmering like mother-of-pearl.

That was all. I opened the door and scurried down the dark corridors until I found my brother's room. "Hello, Jean," I said, smiling as I perceived him laboring over the accounts, balancing a ridiculous set of old spectacles over his nose.

He smiled in response and continued on his work until I had set down the groceries and was hiding them away in the pantry. "Oh, Manon!" he cried with mock outrage. "You have been too frugal! Why did you not one of Monsieur Duval's apple tarts?"

He knew my weakness for sweets. "The pittance you get from that newspaper," I teased, "only allows me to make a few indulgences—but not this week."

"Oh, indeed?" Jean responded with infinite mirth. And then, reaching into the drawer of the wobbling escritoire, he drew out a purse bulging with gold and silver coins.

My mouth dropped open in a very unladylike display as I stared at the glowing pile of hard currency. Jean's steady grin was contagious, and it eventually overpowered my uneasiness.

"Where—where did you get that?" I asked breathlessly.

Jean went on beaming. "Did you see the man who just left?" he asked. "The fellow in the mask?"

I looked down, slightly taken aback. "Yes."

"He came in requesting a room and before I could stop him—" Jean had removed his spectacles and was waving them in the air, "—he had given me this and was outside the door!"

I looked again at the money, exaltation slowly transforming to distrust. "Does he mean to come back?"

"Of course!" Jean exploded cheerfully. "He advised me he keeps peculiar hours, which is why he paid so well." Jean chuckled. "But I would be willing to put up with any degree of peculiarity for this—" and he jabbed importantly at the money.

Dubiously I knew that money like this did not come from the pockets of anyone who had obtained it honestly. "Who is he?"

"He calls himself Erik," Jean replied, picking up a scrap of paper from amongst the gold and silver. As he handed it to me, I noticed the handwriting was twisted and uneven, like an untrained child's, in the single word: Erik. "I think we've got some deposed aristocracy here—you know their ways—eccentric and all that."

"Why would he wear a mask?" I found myself asking. "Only a thief would want to hide his identity."

Jean's smile faded briefly. "Well, I don't pretend to understand the idiosyncrasies of our chastised ruling class. Do you?" He was nervously smiling, poking my arm with his finger as he had done to irritate me since childhood.

"You are too trusting, Jean," I said crossly.

"No, simply animated by the prospect of gold," he grinned.

I aimed to meet this Erik myself and form my own opinion of him to validate my theories, but his hours were indeed peculiar. For a week I saw nothing of him—though I found, much to my horror, my brother had given the stranger the room next to mine. This, however, became more useful than annoying as I could hear through the thin walls when the man entered and exited. It seemed to me he was out until about one in the morning and then took his leave again at six. For five hours he was still in his room—asleep, I gathered—and then he was gone.

Eccentricities indeed!—I thought. The man appeared to need little sleep. The second week less than the first, I discovered: Even at this time before the war, I did not sleep well and one night, when the stranger Erik came in at 1:00, he was not completely silent.

I was staring at my bare room, the lonely dresser beside my bed, the cracks in the ceiling, listening disinterestedly to the scuttle on the floor that was probably an insect. Then—suddenly a ghostly, disembodied music began to pervade through to me. Hushed and fragile, it was clearly the plaintive strings of a well-loved violin. The music was brief and very, very quiet—barely audible beyond the partition. But its effect was radical. Suddenly I was sitting up in bed, pressing my ear to the wall to hear more of the sweet, exquisite but very sad music. It seemed as though I had heard it before—where or how, I could not know.

Then it was over, and Erik on the other side of the wall was silent once more. It had lasted less than a minute, but it was so beautiful I found myself hoping I might hear it again.

I did. The next night and the next, at about 1:00 when I heard the door open, there were almost immediate notes wafting from the violin. The songs were always brief, embarrassed and furtive, but achingly beautiful. I wondered at the cause of these sudden, short bursts of art amid the darkness and monotony of my life—he was obviously a musician of unparalleled skill. Why did he play alone in the middle of the night when he should have been playing for all of Paris in the concert halls?

One night I was given another clue. Listening eagerly, I was disappointed that there was no music—only silence after his entrance greeted my hopeful musings. Just as I was drifting off, a few simple pluckings of the violin were followed by an equally soft and agonized voice—flawless but so wrapped in melancholy it was almost painful to hear.

I decided after that night to go to my brother about Erik, the secretive and remarkable musician. Surely I could at least meet him, as I still had not seen a sign of him. I had formed a rather elaborate history where in the mysterious Erik was an escaped Finnish violinist who had lost favor at court and was hiding here in Paris.

Accosting my brother, I found something entirely different. "How naïve I was," Jean said with uncharacteristic sobriety when I had asked, simply enough, to speak to him about Erik.

"What do you mean?"

"There have been complaints. He's been disturbing people at night. I've asked him to leave."

"What? I mean, it's true he's been making noise at night, but it's hardly a disturbance."

"You were right, of course," he muttered, apparently not hearing what I had said. "Why on earth I allowed my greed to overpower my better judgment—you should have said something, Manon—"

"I did say something! Just now," I interrupted, irritated. "I tell you, he's a wonderful musician—"

"A freak is what he is," Jean added coldly.

I stopped suddenly. "What do you mean by that?"

"The mask, Manon: you were right about the mask," Jean murmured, taking my hands. I looked into his eyes, seeing sudden worry. "One of my tenants had seen him before. In the fairs, like the ones we used to see when we were young."

"A freak?"

"More than just that," Jean went on, lowering his voice. "Who knows where he acquired the gold . . .?"

I thought how dissimilar the ideas of a freakish thief and the voice I had heard at night seemed to be and could only wonder who had been deceived more. "And he is leaving? He agreed to it?"

But that was not the end of it. As I walked down the corridor, lost in thought, toward my room, I noticed that his—Erik's—door was halfway open. Pausing in his flight, I saw the tall violinist crouched on the floor, placing his few belongings into a small, lean suitcase. He was dressed all in black, and from behind I could see the ribbons of his mask tied on the back of his head.

I remembered Jean's first impressions of an eccentric aristocrat, and the description fit better than expected: Erik's movements, even in the haste of departure, were elegant and surprisingly refined.

But then he stood up, and came to the door, brushing past me quickly with a quizzical look. His soft cloak touched me as said curtly but very politely. "Excuse me, Mademoiselle." Then he turned and walked from the past into the present.

He was still reeling back in the shock that I had called him by name. He stood there with bewilderment visible in his grey-gold eyes, his white, translucent hands held up in a gesture of absolute surprise. The silvery gauze of his shirt appeared, for a moment, out of his black cloak amid the sudden motion.

I replied to his unasked question, "You lodged under my brother about a year ago."

There appeared to be some relief from behind the black _papier-mâché. _Immediately he regained his dignified, superior stance and glanced back at me coldly. "I see."

"You played your violin at night," I went on, stepping a little closer.

A look of displeasure crossed his face, and then he turned away with an air of embarrassment. "Perhaps," he conceded, dropping his arms so that his cloak fell over him in a cascade of blackness. He cleared his throat. "I have a proposition for you."

His sudden transformation into a cool, diplomatic façade was most amusing and I could not repress an incredulous smile as I said, "Really?"

"I will continue to use morphine occasionally and you will not inform your captain of my activities—"

"What use is that to me?" I asked sharply.

His eyes narrowed and gleamed with a look that silenced me at once. "And I will reward your troubles with something very dear in this age."

And, apparently out of nowhere, Erik produced a crisp-crusted, golden-flaked pie. I stared at the sudden advent of food, feeling my mouth growing dry in anticipation. I restrained myself though I could see my own hunger reflected in his satisfied gaze.

"Be cautioned, Mademoiselle," he said, "that if you betray me I will take precautions that you are permanently silenced."

I gulped. I looked into his yellow eyes. Their frigidity gave me proof he was as brutal as he claimed. Still, even at that moment I could discern something delicate and compassionate beyond the apparent hate and coldness. His words should have given me all reason to fear I should have turned at that moment and run, screaming. Instead, I found myself inexorably trusting his lunacy and believing his crazy proposal.

"Why not continue as before?" I asked. "Steal the morphine instead of trading it?"

There seemed to be a trace of amusement as he answered, "You see, I don't enjoy the prospect of a hundred soldiers tramping down to my home."

"So you do live down there?"

Another grim silencing look. I cast my eyes down, all too aware of the curbed intensity lurking a few feet away. "What do you want the morphine for?" I asked.

"The same thing for which Soeur Babette wanted it," he explained nastily.

"You are very impertinent!" I cried.

"And you are very hungry," he said. He rose his eyes from beneath the black, gazing at me in some silky emotion I could not fathom. "Be sensible, Mademoiselle," he offered in a quiet, supplicating voice—for a moment I could recognize the tone that had haunted my night along with the lilting violin.

"You must understand," I said, staring deeply at the pie, "the morphine is not really mine to bargain for."

"My demands are modest enough," he said, not tearing his glittering gold eyes away. "I am not in as constant a need as you may perceive."

I really did not have a choice. If I refused, who was to stay I would get back from this meeting alive? I nodded slowly and took the pie from his grasp. It required all my self control not to dig my fingers into the savory crust and devour it.

"When I am in need of your services," Erik said coolly, "I shall find you. Until then, Mademoiselle, good day."

And walking into a shadow, he disappeared.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Sorry about the morphine. I wrote this story 5 years ago and am just now getting it typed up, so it is rather old and written at a time where I took Kay as the New Testament to the Leroux Bible.

5.

That was how the exchange began.

It appeared that Erik did indeed have some control over how often he did take the morphine, though assuredly he always came back for more. The first few times I was well and truly startled, for I never heard him approach. I was always between some errand; bringing up more firewood or walking from the _foyer de la danse _to our singers' foyer. He would just be there, moving out of the shadows with a certain refined self-satisfaction. Always a faint smile on his thin, pale lips, always some hidden amusement in his grey-gold eyes that were inexorably peering out of the black _papier-mâché. _My attempts at conversation were generally shunned, but occasionally I got something out of him.

"Aren't you cold?" I asked him once.

He looked surprised from behind his black disguise, drawing his black cloak about him in response. "What would give you that impression?" he asked sneeringly, his expression changing to one of deep distrust. "Does the coldness of my hands perhaps offend you?"

One of his alabaster hands had found its way out his black vestment and hung in the air before him, mocking me.

"I've never even felt your hands," I told him with uncertainty, unsure why he was so insulted.

"Oh." He was obviously at a slight loss, something that did not happen often.

"I meant, as you live so far below the surface; isn't it cold down there?"

He stared at me blankly for some time. "Indeed, Mademoiselle." He turned away, looking at the ground as if lost in thought. "So cold . . . so hungry . . ."

Overhearing his mutterings probably not meant for my ear, I moved toward him. "If you're hungry, Erik, why do you keep giving me all of your food? I'm sure it's cost you a considerable sum." I gestured to the loaf of bread he had given me and was now in the crook of my arm.

He looked up again, his eyes icy. "That is not your concern."

"It's the morphine, isn't it?" I asked knowingly, shaking my head. "You've lost your appetite."

He was silent for a moment, glaring at me with emotionlessly glassy eyes. Such a peculiar yellow. I had never understood that. "Yes, I suppose it was the morphine," he murmured coldly.

"How long have you been taking it?" I asked him.

"My, my, Mademoiselle," he responded coolly, "such a penchant for personal questions. One might call you impertinent."

"Of course I'm impertinent," I responded. "I'm a nurse."

"And a facetious one at that." There was almost a smile from his white face.

"I suppose," I hazarded. "Now tell me how long you've been taking it so I can determine how long you have to live."

A sudden sound broke my concentration and reduced what had been a firm look on my face to one of fear. He was laughing. A dull, grating rusty sound; he had thrown his head back and was chuckling in morbid amusement. "You wish to know how long I shall live!"

"Don't you know the morphine harms your body?"

"Of course I do!" he vociferated loudly, advancing on me with a sudden dangerous fury. I trembled, and his mouth only grew into a grimmer line. "How long I shall live is of no consequence to me," he said quietly, nonetheless searing me with his eyes. "I would rather it be sooner than later, Mademoiselle."

I gasped. "Are you not ashamed?"

"Don't lecture me on the sanctity of life!" he roared, pacing back and forth through the deserted hall. "Do you imagine you can sway me to beg God's forgiveness and be loved into the bosom of the Catholic church? Try none of your convent speeches, Mademoiselle! You think you learned the meaning of life in your sacred school, but you know nothing!"

The air was fraught only by his rapid breathing as he fought to wrestle his ire back into the detached phantom he had been. Surprised, I was not as frightened as I should have been. I had struck a nerve, most assuredly, and the man was certainly capable of violence. I knew then that he had taken life before.

Yet he was clearly upset and strove to hide it from me. When he had calmed somewhat, he said with maddeningly politeness, "Excuse me. You have your payment . . . I must go."

And he did go. He ran and disappeared with all the cunning and speed that had first acquainted me with him when he stole the morphine. But that was only for awhile. He was back again, accosting me a darkened passage all of a sudden, melting out of the shadows as if he really was a ghost and not flesh and blood like the rest of us. I think he truly got some comic satisfication from startling me, for when I tried to seek him out, I could feel his presence yet never see him.

He would appear at the strangest times. He seemed to delight in remaining enveloped in his heavy darkness as he said, "Do you never get nervous, Mademoiselle?" There was a slight edge of anger to his voice I had not heard before.

"Come out, Erik," I evaded. "You'll get no morphine if you don't."

Yet, indeed, he did love to toy with me, which was most assuredly making me nervous. When he made no signs of showing himself, I sighed. "If you must know, you are distinctly nerve-wracking. But that has always been your intention, has it not?"

Appearing with something of a grin in his voice, Erik nevertheless addressed me in a voice that conveyed certain annoyance. "I was not implying myself. I meant that as lone females, among many men who are of less than delicate sensibilities, you and Soeur Marie Babette must be of some fortitude."

I turned to look at the tall, phantasmagoric figure he presented. I narrowed my eyes. I could not believe the morphine fiend—who I knew, from experience, was capable of deception, theft, and perhaps violence of a serious degree—was considerate of the virtues of "two lone females," as he called us. I stared at his impatient figure, rocking on his expensive black leather shoes, immersed in his fine black cloak which blurred his obviously thin frame, giving his spindly physique an element of the grandiose and macabre.

"What is it?" he sneered, his eyes filling with hate and rage. I realized he did not like being stared at. I remembered suddenly what Jean had called him—"freak." How ugly was he really underneath?

I looked down. "We have no cause to fear for our virtues. Collier and his men are honest. Besides," I added, "it's of no consequence to you."

He was silent for a moment. "They are honest, perhaps. But no man is above temptation, Mademoiselle." Suddenly his eyes glittered like the surface of polished opals.

I regarded him with some interest. His expression was muted, blank. Yet his eyes were searing with something unsaid. "And what would you know of temptation?" I whispered.

He shook his head in derision. "More than a spotless woman of God could ever know." I observed the passion with which he uttered this; his lips strained against his mask, restraining some checked tide of emotion.

"I am sure we offer little temptation," I dismissed.

"I see that you are ignorant of the evils of the world, Mademoiselle. Apparently the convent neglected certain areas of your education." All was uttered in a sharp, biting ridicule. I had noticed his raillery for the church, and it was not comforting.

"You think me too innocent. I am lamentably aware of the faults of men."

"And yet you do not fear."

"Monsieur, I do not need to fear."

His anger returned forcefully. "Are you so very virtuous, Mademoiselle, that the worldly things cannot touch you!" With alarm I realized his hands were clenching at his sides.

"No, indeed."

"Besides, with all due respect, it is not for you I fear."

I understood this more than he did. I would later learn that Erik valued all things of beauty, and of course he would feel personally responsible for a beauty such as Babette. "you are right to fear for her," I said; "she is very naïve. She has much to learn." Then I looked at him firmly. "But it is not your place. The fair face of a young sister is too delicate for the fixed glance of any man."

To my surprise, he said nothing. "You believe," he whispered, "I would want to the girl?"

I was afraid of his soft manner, that it concealed inward rage. "Did you not just tell me how flawed man is?"

"I'm old enough to be her father!"

His vehemence bewildered me. To tell the truth, I had not guessed his age. I had considered him much younger, late-twenties perhaps. There was something supple and youthful in his grace, that contrasted with the apparent mature magnetism in his eyes. I decided he could successfully be any age he chose. "How would I know that?" I finally answered. "You tell me nothing of yourself."

"There is nothing you need to know!" he retorted. "Am I not only a horrible godless morphine thief?" His eyes narrowed at me, the yellow rims reminding me of a cat's. "I know that is what you think of me."

I shook my head.

"Ah, but what does it matter? Hatred is nothing that is unknown to me."

"I don't hate you, Erik," I murmured.

He smiled sadly at me. "Don't you?"

"No, indeed," I said gently. "Now won't you take your morphine?"

He walked slowly toward me, his black cloak dancing about him in pirouetting waves. "Mademoiselle, I hope you will then accept my protection."

With rather more bitterness than I wanted displayed, I murmured, "So I suppose you are very fond of Babette."

His head turned sharply, yet his expression was unreadable. For a moment he did not speak. "She is certainly in need of protection, Mademoiselle." His eyes were stony and sharp like flints. "She has not the outraged show of virtue that some cling to."

I could not, if pressed, explain why it was this seemingly innocuous remark was such a painful barb. But if it had, indeed, been darted to goad me to a fury, it did just that. I somewhat wonder now, in retrospect, if it was not his own curious way of asking a question his remarkable politeness would not allow him to put to me by conventional means.

"You have gone too far," I found myself telling coldly. "You believe that you know all, Erik—you believe whatever position of misanthrope you fulfill entitles you to understand everyone." I paused a moment to collect myself. "No, indeed, it is not a show of 'outraged virtue' that protects me. It is the medical certainty that I will never have children."

I spun away from him, angry at how easily the knowledge still affected me. Babette's unthinking insult still hovered at the edge of consciousness, provoking me. The lack of sleep, I decided, was making me permanently emotional. I could not wonder at Erik's silent reproach for my behavior, his disgust at my lack of femininity. But then again, who was he to me? I asked myself in a distressed fury. Why did I care so for his good opinion? He had given me no reason to trust him, to think well of him. I knew he was some kind of hideous medical case that science could not treat, but also a man of great accomplishment and musical skill. But who was he really?

The sound of his voice behind me, soft and compassionate, roused me. "I am sorry," he said. "I know how this feels. . ."

His frank admission was somehow very comforting. I was tempted to turn around just to see what his grey-gold eyes held, but I could not move. I smiled slightly and said, with humor, "What is your excuse?"

He began to sputter in what I thought was shock, and when I turned his expression behind the mask was one of bemusement. "Forgive my impertinence," I said, "but you should already be familiar with that characteristic of mine." Ladies were not supposed to speak as I was. I truly was being shockingly improper.

Erik must have agreed, for he said quietly, "I should think it was perfectly obvious." And with that he took the morphine, handed me a dubious-looking but enormous sausage, and fled.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Thank you all for reading and reviewing. I hope you enjoy where this story goes. (The line about the sausage is not supposed to have any sexual connotation, but you are welcome to think what you wish about it.)

6.

For many days after I meditated on his statement. What was obvious about Erik that would make him as much of a stranger to the vagaries of love as I was? Yet I knew next to nothing about him. Whatever was behind the mask held all the answers.

By this time, it was late December. It had been several months since my first run-in with the ghost. We had seen much of each other in the months of the siege. But he was still an enigma and I, of course, could not trust him entirely. Then it was suddenly January 1871 and the snows were fierce. Paris was on her knees, and rumors of surrender were everywhere. I had never been so afraid. Cold, hungry, and exhausted, my weariness mirrored that of everyone in the city. Amidst this sea of depression, I had not heard from my brother Jean since Christmas. I was beginning to fear the worst: that he'd been captured or killed by the Germans.

I was alone in the singers' foyer, Babette—whose spirits had since returned since her discovery with the morphine—in the _foyer de la danse_ with the men, having taken over the ritual religious ceremonies. With only a gas lamp and Jean's last copy of _Charivari, _I mourned alone. I was sure the surrender would come soon, perhaps the next day. While I had no fierce pride for the city like a native Parisian, I was certainly anxious for conditions to improve. Little did I know I was living on the cusp of another revolution.

I was most surprised when it was Erik, and not Babette, who came out of the night. His sudden appearance was certainly startling, as he materialized effortlessly out of the shadows in the half-finished room. The way he haunted the labyrinthe building could certainly be seen as a ghostly presence.

"What are you doing here?"

He silently regarded me, the shadows on his figure deepening into furrows and contours by the proximity to the lamp. "I believe there is only reason for that, Mademoiselle," he said, tilting his head.

Heaving a great sigh, I pointed to the crate of morphine impassively. "You know what you want."

His eyes were questioning under his mask. He moved to retrieve the morphine, and I returned to leafing sadly through the well-worn pages of _Charivari, _my heart growing heavier with each passing minute.

I would have thought he'd have left me in peace, for Erik had always been polite. Yet I heard no footsteps, belying his lingering presence. I was about to ask him to leave, when he said in a soft voice, "You are reading _Charivari._"

"Yes."

He drew closer, looking down at the paper in my hands. When I looked up, there appeared to be something of a warm, compassionate smile on his parchment features. "What an intelligent choice of periodicals you make, Mademoiselle."

Taken slightly aback, I nevertheless smiled. "My brother is a cartoonist there."

He nodded. "I know. Toli."

"How do you know that?" I breathed.

"I make it my business to know the identities of all those worth the acquaintance," he said evasively. He turned to go, adding in a whisper, "And you need not concern yourself over his safety."

Shocked, I looked up at him. Normally I would have distrusted such information. He could very well be lying, I knew. Yet—"Wait, Erik," I cried.

Obediently he stopped and turned. There was an elegant sort of pride in the way he moved, his cloak moving from him like the wings of a bird. "Who—who are you?" I asked, standing to bashfully meet his gaze.

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter."

"But you are a genius, are you not?"

The rusty sound of his laughter was jarring. "Perhaps."

"I've heard how you play." He nodded. "Are you not also a scholar?" Another nod. "And a great traveler?"

This reduced him to a melancholy I found very peculiar. He spoke something softly in a foreign language, but said nothing I was meant to hear.

I came slightly closer. "Then you know if the city will surrender."

He looked down at me. "Whatever makes you think I know that?" A bitter distaste had returned to his speech. "I am made a virtual prisoner in my own home, Mademoiselle. Even a home such as the one I am building can become nothing short of boring if one is not allowed freedom."

Suddenly I found myself visualizing his underground home. What majesty would Erik lend to subterranean tunnels I could only conjecture, but my imagination ran wild with projected visions of macabre and curious rooms. I found myself exclaiming, "What is your house like? Would you take me down to see it?"

His whole countenance reeked of distaste. "Never!" I opened my mouth to protest, but I remembered my place and decided not to argue. Still, he saw my dissent. "I do not give invitations to my home, Mademoiselle," he said stiffly. "It is at the moment in a state of disrepair." He turned abruptly. "Now here is your payment." He drew out of his cloak a slab of confectioners' chocolate that made my mouth water.

Even so, I refused it when offered. "I don't want it."

He looked crestfallen. "Mademoiselle—you're starving."

"No more than you are," I countered.

He was silent. Then he understood. "What is it you want?"

My eyes glowing, I replied, "Play your violin for me."

"This is hardly an orthodox request, Mademoiselle."

"It was not meant to be, Erik."

He shook his head, as if unable to understand my vehemence. I saw his high shoulders droop, though I could not tell if it was from weariness or secret delight. Not looking into my eyes, he said, "I will return shortly."

If he had been aware of the danger, he did not say. And he was very prompt. Not a few moments later he was back. I believe that he was secretly pleased to be in demand, secretly happy to be asked to perform. Yet when he arrived, a beautiful violin in his arms, he was calm as a sepulcher, his face relaxed and impassive. Then he put the bow to the strings and played, and everything changed.

It was the same perfection of sound I had heard earlier when he had played in the furtive night. An achingly beautiful melody was rendered inexorable by his expert fingers, long and delicate. He was indeed skilled, and the passion that came from his half-closed eys assured me he was an artist of the highest degree. Yet, for all the beauty, there was a sadness as elusive as it was exquisite. If he had played any longer I would have wept.

When he concluded, I could only whisper in awe, "Did you write that?" And he nodded, seemingly as shaken as I was. I would have gone on, but—

Babette's voice roused me. "Manon, what was that mu—?" and she saw Erik and screamed.

In the confusion that followed, Erik fled and I attempted to calm Babette, clapping my hand over her mouth, which only caused her screaming to increase volume. As I struggled to quiet here she began to mumble words of shocked horror. At last, she succeeded in pulling away. My headdress fell off, leaving me with long black hair falling over my face.

To my mortification, Collier and a contingent of men rushed into the room, demanding to know the trouble. Helplessly, I cried, "It's nothing. She was startled—"

"I saw a man, a man in black—"

"She's delusional, hysterical—"

"I _saw _him, he was taking our morphine—"

"She's hysterical," I repeated to Collier, who was staring at me with something diabolical in his gaze.

"Yes, Mademoiselle, but you are not." He nodded to his men. "Take the sister and calm her. She has no doubt received a great shock."

They left, and Collier and I were alone. His eyes were bloodshot. I knew the predicted surrender had shaken him badly, the reason I had statyed out of his way since Christmas. I found hwas advancing at me with a look of cruelty in his black eyes.

"Captain—" I began.

"Tell me what the girl saw," he said.

"Nothing. A trick of the light—"

Suddenly his hard hands were on my shoulders. My stomach did loops and remembered our last encounter with the razor. "Captain, you will take your hands off of me!" No response. "You would do well to remember that I am a lady!"

"Treacherous indeed," he growled, backing me against a wall. He made no signs of letting go, and I was suddenly more frightened than I had ever been. He was going to snap. "Now, tell me what she saw!"

I tried to reply, but I found I could not utter a word. "She said morphine. Have you perhaps been trading with the enemy?"

"No—just a—just a man who lives below the Opéra."

His grip tightened. I was not entirely sure that Erik had left the room. He could have heard me betray him. Now he would kill me—

"This is where you have been getting your food while the rest of us starve, Mademoiselle Lapaine?"

His face was closing in. I felt the coldness of the wall through my gown. The pressure on my arms was tightening.

"He said—he said he would kill me if I ever told," I said.

"Nonsense!" Collier shouted. "you've been down the cellars to see him! Tell me where he lives!"

"No, no, I swear I don't—"

Collier's hands were suddenly around my neck, squeezing the air out of me. I couldn't think. The heat of his hands was chocking out my breath. I knew he was speaking, but I couldn't understand. I could no longer see, my world a haze of black as my lungs protested.

I was on the ground. I had fainted. I still could not see, but this was because my hair was in my eyes. I struggled to stand but found I was coughing and couldn't breathe.

"Breathe, breathe!" came a commanding voice from above me. I recognized it as Erik's and saw the tall phantom kneel beside me. I was aware of his hands touching and massaging my throat until the air could pass through. His arms were strong as I clung to them.

I looked at him. His yellow eyes glowed as he said, "Are you all right? Speak to me, Manon!"

I realized he was calling me by my Christian name, which shocked me into replying. "Your hands, Erik—they're so cold . . ."

He let go of my throat and took my hands to help me up. "Your throat is bruised, but you will live."

Then he moved away, and I recognized Collier's body on the ground. Erik knelt beside him to remove a long, corded rope and methodically gathered it up. I stared at him. "You killed him!" Erik said nothing. "You killed him!"

"I saved your life," he replied coldly, shock and disappointment evident in his eyes.

"No, you didn't," I said. "When they find his body, Erik, they will blame me."

" A young woman could not have strangled a grown man," he protested. "Even they can see that."

"It won't matter, I tell you. Erik, they'll kill me."

He shook his head. "You are too valuable. They would not kill a nurse."

"Who knows of what they are capable?" I found myself suddenly hysterical, contemplating my own death. It was true, Erik had saved my life—but he had killed a man to do it! And now he looked at me with such hurt, as if I'd betrayed him. "Yes, you saved my life," I said, "but for how long?"

He turned away. "What would you have me do?" he whispered hoarsely.

I grabbed his arm and felt it tighten discernibly. "Erik, if you have a care whether I live or die you will take me down to your home."

"No!"

"It's the only way."

"I refuse."

"I will stay until such a time that I can flee the country safely. You must know how the Opéra is being watched."

He turned to look at me. "I cannot."

"Please." I fell to my knees, clutching at his cold hands. "I never betrayed you. Please, Erik."

After an interminable silence, he removed his hands from mine and swept off. "You will keep up," he said icily, "or you will be left behind."

Hurriedly I obeyed, knowing I had left behind my few belongings and that I might never see Babette—or anyone I knew—again. Meekly I followed Erik's giant stride as he led me down staircase after staircase—in fact five of them.

The fifth cellar.

His gait was brisk and betrayed his anger, but I stayed well out of his way. I found that the lake was indeed real, low, cold and very murky. Erik waited impatiently until I was in the boat, and then he propelled us along on the black water.

If I had not just been strangled I perhaps would have been more awed by the sight of all this. As it was, I was unimpressed by sights that would have baffled others. I watched the blackness of the underground swallow us up. Erik said nothing and looked back at me only once, the slightest glance.

I saw his house, carved out of limestone, appearing like a ghostly primeval dwelling as it morphed so suddenly out of the rock. Erik helped me down with disdain, then set about unlocking the front door to his dwelling.

Once inside, I was blind as I had been in my faint until Erik solemnly lit a gas lamp and revealed his secret labor. It was rather surprising in its well-planned layout, the work of an efficient architect and craftsman. Even so, I could tell it was not completed. There was furniture but arranged in a manner that suggested it was not permanent. It was all rather antiquated, and the bare limestone walls left much to be desired. Above all I was aware of how bone-chillingly cold it was.

I waited on the threshold as Erik ventured to an ancient wood cabinet and drew out something that looked like bedding. He placed it on the top of a dusty red settee, which he then indicated and said, "You will sleep here."

He moved again in the direction of a closed door. "You may attend to your personal needs in there." I looked down, blushing, amazed at his diffidence. His stride was great and mine was small as he led me to another room deep within his house. Glimpsing the open door I could see some black and red material, and the pipes of an enormous organ. "This is my chamber," he said stiffly. "You will not enter unless instructed to do so."

I nodded. He presently disappeared into his chamber and, having no invitation, I did not follow. When he returned, I realized my shivering had not gone unnoticed. "I'm afraid I don't have much in the way of . . . ladies' things," he said at last, with an effort, though his voice was considerably softer. He handed me an old shawl that nevertheless looked warm.

"Thank you," I said. "You're very kind."

He mumbled something. "I cannot pretend I am glad of the situation you now put me in, Mademoiselle," he confessed reproachfully. "However, as it does seem necessary, I bid you good night." He turned sharply and began to head in the direction of his chamber.

"Good night," I repeated. "And thank you—for saving my life."

He stopped momentarily in his flight, turned his head a fraction, and inclined it, and then walked away.


	7. Chapter 7

7.

I had been accustomed to more deplorable sleeping conditions than the one I had forced Erik to bestow on me. So it was not the accommodations that disturbed my sleep that night, as I later led him to believe.

I had managed to become very comfortable—in relative terms of course—on the folded blankets over the antique settée. Tucked away in what would one day be a guest room—so he later told me—I had the strange sensation I was going to bed among graves. In the corner of a nearly empty, grey room underground, peering at the remnants of furniture covered in white sheets . . . every distant chair was swathed strangely until, in the dim light of one gas lamp that was left burning morosely, the chairs seemed to fill with inhabitants. Surely these were the ghosts of the victims dead above, veiled like darling brides in the depth of this tomb . . .

It was impossible, after witnessing so much carnage, not to be as sensitive to the shadows that night as I was. Fear overpowered a generally _sérieuse _disposition, and I clutched at the feeble covers in the darkness, unable to shut my eyes. As I tried to regain control, I reasoned: would you rather be above and nearer to the face of God, or here, perhaps near to the face of perdition, but safe? It was not only the depth that reassured me, but the company. Oh yes, a murderer, a drugged fiend—yet I was certain only the most protracted circumstances would cause him to even consider harming me. Whatever Erik might have been capable of—and I believed a great deal—a certain respect for femininity pervaded his attitude.

Only as I was causing my little heart to slow down its thundering so I might get some rest, terror began anew. I heard wicked, disturbingly mirthful laughter—the laughter of horror—sharp—derisive—devilish—insane—

I shuddered. I bolted up from the settée. Nothing would make that horrid laughter cease! My panic swelled. On and on the laughter of Satan himself rang through the empty house . . .

No, it was not empty, I remembered, practical reason slowly capping the outrageous terror I had been faced with fully. It was Erik's laughter, I realized, though the grating, preternatural sound resembled not at all his clear, exceedingly brilliant speaking voice. The morphine, I thought, placing my hand at the base of my throat in fear. It was the first wave of euphoria sweeping over him. Dear God, was it not as terrible to feed a sin as to indulge in one?

His laughter rose and soared maniacally from his chamber through wood and hallways, growing steadily more injurious and unnerving as staggered seconds went by. I clutched at my throat harder. The memories of men whose blood still stained my apron after repeated washings were difficult enough to forget. Could I live with the notion that I had caused, with my own hands, a deliberate death?

Abruptly, the laughter did stop, for at the height of the frenzied, breathless gaiety, the unfortunate man who had saved my life made a harsh choking sound and then was silent.

I was no more relieved than if he had continued on laughing like that for eternity. I felt my eyes and ears straining in the darkness for a hint that he might still be alive, and that shuddering spectacle of energy had not signaled the end of his tortured life. My hand crept up over my mouth, as if to prevent me from screaming, though I was as likely to make an outburst then as the Prussians were to retreat. Of course, there was the probably chance that the euphoria had been replaced by crippling apathy so common to morphine.

Still, I thought: _what if I go in and he is dead? Will I be able to venture back and live as before? Where would I go and how would I support myself? Could I really stir a foot knowing I had killed him and let him die alone?_ His murder was equally the death of my prospects, for ludicrous as it had seemed, Erik held my life in his hands.

I can't think how it happened; I was sure the terror would have been more than ample to keep me awake until morning. But I must have fallen out of consciousness from exhaustion. For I was woken again, not by the terrible laughter of a brain gone mad on drugs, but something infinitely worse.

It was like a reversed reflection, cunning and horrific in its acuteness. For now, all the shuddering, chilling fright I had felt earlier that night came from _him—_spat back at me as if in derision—holding a substantial depth of desperate suffering and anguish. Cries of agony, interspersed with exclamations and jagged sobs. It was like the Hôtel-Dieu—the maddened shouts on the operating table, all that blood spurting—

I needed only hear it again to spur myself to pick up the oil lamp and take it with me as I careened in the uncaring night to his door. There I skidded to a halt. Were these the cries of the dying? At first I supposed he had knocked over a light in the hilarity of his injection and was perishing in the flames. But no—no light under the door, no smoke. Then how had he been harmed in such a way that would cause such a reserved, apathetic man to cry out in such shameless pain? Was the drug's effect turning sour?

But he was speaking, or rather shrieking, and the voice was his this time, only roughened by obvious discontent. "Oh dear God . . ." he cried. "Don't let—make it stop—keep them away!"

_Them_? I thought? Could it be Erik's victims were returning to torment him in mind—in that ever-vengeful prison of sleep—as my charges had so ruthlessly done before?

"No! No!" he shouted. "Let me die . . . please . . ."

But I would not let him die. Clutching the lamp with one hand, the handle of the door with the other, I let myself in, utterly grateful, though somewhat surprised, that the door was unlocked.

The light was already trembling unreliably in my hand, and upon greeting the scene that now assailed my so-wearied senses, the lamp sailed wildly on the wall. Phantasmagoric shapes proceeded to pounce in and out of the darkness and the flickering realm of the light, giving rise to more fear. Surely no morphine, no nightmare could produce an effect like this, the mercurial shapes of what appeared to be several hundred demons assailing this one man.

Pressing one frightened hand to my breast and somehow endeavoring to hold the light steadier, I found my religious and moral imaginations to be getting the better of me, for there was only one man on that bed. His writhings were so fierce and desperate it was conceivable how an impressionable mind could have observed the death struggle between man and monster . . .

His shuddering body convulsions did nothing to dim my fear, only causing my hand to bend at such an angle that before long, hot oil was dripping upon his new, certainly expensive carpeting. It was surely habit that prompted the fall to my knees to amend the burning mess, and there I knelt, huddled over the thin rays of light as the figure tossed and turned while uttering savage cries.

_Oh, you are really the compassionate nurse, _my conscience derided. _You shirk from responsibility when mercy is to be extended to all human beings, no matter how profane or misformed! _My hand was clutching at my lips in terror and shame, because I could not make myself inch further.

At length I forced myself to move closer and ere long, I stopped again in the most difficult struggle of my life. For laying in my path was not only the discarded vial containing his sought-after drug, not only the needle and tourniquet—there beside the instruments of his destruction and mine, was his black _papier-mâché _mask.

My hand rose to my mouth, and I absently bit at the flesh. I wept for the first time in all those months of horror and revulsion. For memory is a strange capricious thing, and I was just now regaining mine.

I had been eleven years old. Fairs came infrequently to Saumur, it was such a small town then. So, like any rural child desirous of entertainment, I was anxious to extract my yearly exposure. Children are easily amused. The jugglers with their colorful pins and the dogs yapping on raggedy scarves were quickly absorbed as harmless fun. But children are also easily frightened. A babe will shriek at almost any disturbance and this will reflect in panic in all the younger children.

That is why the true monstrosities of the traveling fairs are reserved for adults. Adults care not for the suffering of one so removed as a bearded woman or a red-eyed albino. Adults are only glad to be reminded that, whatever shortcomings that they may suffer from, they will always be above the freak in a cage, the deformed and the dangerous whose only purpose is to thrill and advertise for smelling salts.

I tell you this because my own poor mother perpetrated the collective derision of the crowd. Lord save us, she was not beautiful either, but the little entertainment available to a factory worker was, though coarse, as satisfying as any to be had in her life. So she paid a dirty sou out of her conventional black lace mitts and, balancing my young brother on one hip and holding carefully to mine with the other, we waded past the grimy carpets and tents to observe that summer's fair.

It was true—what could the performers in the fairs do to earn their lives but exploit themselves? So they stood like looming trees of primeval forests, gloomy and silent to me while my mother only perceived the showman's façade these desperate and unloved people put on to garner payment for a few of those pleasures we are afforded in life.

My brother, the young and infinitely sage, could see beyond the carnival colors and gleaming lights, past the superficial look of pride the South Sea Indian wore while flexing his strangely tattooed skin for the wondering crowds; past the fake girlish giggles of the little dwarf woman as she paraded in dolls' clothes. My brother began to cry, almost immediately, despite my embarrassed mother, she nervously smiling at the other patrons who were trying to enjoy the spectacle. "Come along, Jean," she mumbled, dragging me by the hand as she hoisted my brother on her hip and we proceeded onward to a cage, like the kind they would one day have in the Zoo in the Bois. The bars were thick, hardened iron, and the space only large enough for a lion to pace grimly in, forever reflecting on his isolation: for there was room for only one.

"Listen, Jean," my mother crooned, exasperated, "listen to that beautiful violin. Doesn't that sound nice?" And the violin, I could see now, came from inside the cage. A man was inside the cage. A man was inside the cage, playing this instrument with an obvious skill. I was too young to really appreciate fine music, but I know it must have been exquisite.

My mother gasped suddenly, reeling back from the cage in distaste so obvious I was sure she had seen something unspeakable. My mother did not pale easily, and she had blanched the color of coffin linings. Her hand rose to her mouth in shock; she was clearly petrified, but, like so many of our unfortunate species when presented with a horror, was unable to turn away.

Jean cried on, and the music of the violin stopped. I saw the man in the cage glance up briefly, eyeing my mother's disbelief with little care. He resumed, back to diligently, mechanically, contemptuously playing the fine wood instrument in his bony hands.

His face—it was indeed horrible, there was no other way to describe it. The skull, the empty eyes and nonexistent nose, the ashen pallor—it was terrible to behold, but I did not cry as my brother did, only stared—and stared. I conjectured in my young mind his approximate age: he was perhaps twenty, though his remarkably thin build made it nebulous. He was seated cross-legged in the lion cage, and, as I peered closer, I saw each arm and leg was manacled with irons and chained to the bars of the cage. Walking closer, despite my mother's silent, intangible warning, I saw that the manacles were heavy, almost comically large on his thin frame, under which were masses of dirty grey clothing, thick with grease and—well, it looked like blood. Fascinated, my brother howling in the background, I proved entirely too reckless for a child and wandered all the way up to the bars.

Of course I was almost too small to be seen, but the corpse-like creature must have sensed the eyes my mother had often struck me for, eyes with a gaze too intense for a child. He looked up again, and a strange sort of fear and hesitancy crossed his face. His white, pinched lips began trembling. I was only a child so I can't remember what exactly I saw in his face, but I can conjecture now that it must have been shame, dread, desperation.

Abruptly he stopped playing the violin. All the misanthropic displacement was gone, all the cold, grave superiority and dignity that might have set apart this man of obvious skill from a mindless freak. I was impassive. In reflection, it was fear that made the corpse-body twist away from me in his tiny cage, fear that I would condemn him like all the rest.

He began straining at the manacles on his limbs to pull away from the bars, but alas his efforts were in vain. He was making little grunts of effort, pulling against the chains and every so often gazing back at me with terror. The perspiration on his white forehead clouded in little beads and as he untucked himself from his position, I could see his bare feet, caked with black dirt.

I saw that he was reaching for something in the corner of his cage. He stretched with his long pale fingers for it, but he couldn't quite grasp it. Like tortured Tantalus, he could never reach that which was closest to him yet ever so far away. The twisting of his body became wild, and I saw the back of his shirt was flayed with wide, red gaps, oozing with dark, drying blood.

"Manon Lapaine!" my mother scolded shrilly, grabbing my arm fiercely and pulling me away from the cage.

Jean was still crying.

"But Mama," I asked, "why was _that one _in a cage?"

"Probably more dangerous than the rest of them, I daresay," was her curt reply.

How correct she proved to be!

But twisting my head back as we looked away, I could see the corpse had not received his reward yet, only slumped in defeat.

And what he had been reaching for, of course, was a black _papier-mâché _mask.

So I had met Erik three times. And I had seen his face, all those years ago. "Oh, forgive me," I whispered aloud, imagining how much pain he had suffered. There was no denying that he could have only gotten uglier as time went on, but now accustomed to the horrors of war—why, his face was no worse than a shelling victim's bloody gashes.

The oil lamp sputtered for a moment, then dimmed. "Don't hurt me," the figure on the bed muttered, and for a moment I thought he had regained his lucidity. His body had calmed its errant convulsions, and he had sprawled himself in exhaustion face-down on his bed.

The tousled bedclothes reminded me of a ruffled bird's feathers, or more evocatively, of the scraps of clothing he had been wearing twenty years before in his cage. Did he remember me? I suddenly wondered with a wry smile. Perhaps. He had been an unforgettable sight, and while he no doubt entertained many staring spectators without ever taking notice of them, I had the conceit to think perhaps he did remember me; perhaps it was more than just the promise of morphine that had caused him to come back again and again.

He muttered something into the sheets again, and now, trembling only a little, I rose to my feet and carefully approached. I was feeling now the full effect of what was a very cold night. It seemed very strange for someone as susceptible to cold as Erik was to live five levels below the ground, but it did give him privacy.

He was shivering slightly, his hands still clutching every so often in fists over the scattered covers as if a new wave of unbearable pain was sweeping over him for a moment, and then no more. As I hovered over him with the probing eyes of the child I was once, one of his hands shot out unknowingly and grabbed mine. I gasped out of reflex as that cold, pinching flesh grasped my wrist. I feared that he would hear my shock, and rage would take over. But he was still in his daze and murmured quietly as his frozen fingers interlaced between mine. "Don't leave me," he whispered in a tiny, fragile voice. "I didn't mean to be ugly—I didn't mean to scare you."

He half rose off of his pallet, staring at me with open—though glassy—eyes. The sudden reacquaintance with the death's-head startled me. I jumped back, and he gripped me tighter. I forced myself to focus on the runny liquid swirling around in his non-sentient, pale gold eyes, steadying the natural revulsion. Yes, he was weeping out of the deep sockets where his tiny, piteous eyes resided.

I pressed back on his hand gingerly and slowly sank to my knees beside the bed. I noticed then what had come of his earlier violent thrashings. His well-made white shirt had multiple torn holes in it, wide and horrible, revealing his thin and pale back. Reminded at once of the stain of blood I had seen on him years before, I was shocked but not surprised to see particularly vicious and visible scars striping his skin. But there were more appalling scars, these ones newly inflicted, the blood still flowing. Releasing my hand from his, I found his small fingernails bloody, and semi-circles of iron red in his white palms.

"Oh dear God," I whispered. I tore at the hem of my petticoat. I carefully began to lift the remnants of his shirt from his back. He winced and shuddered, "It hurts . . . it hurts!" His pleas were so pathetic I almost stopped, but I did not and slowly removed the fabric from his pale skin. It was mass of bloody treads, his back; a testament to years of physical abuse. I trembled as I tried to smooth out the surprisingly deep cuts his nails had inflicted.

Every scar I traced with reverent fingers, imagining each lash of the whip and how he must have suffered on this earth. I wiped his body clean of the welling blood, growing more certain that I had been meant to see this sight—_meant to, _by some force—so one person at least might understand the plight the nameless Erik. So one might appreciate why he was building an underground haven beneath all of humanity.

The scars were painful merely to gaze at, but the rest of his flesh was smooth and marble over prominent bone. The lamp was burning low, flickering on his slowly using and falling spine. I suddenly thought to laugh at the impropriety of the situation and imagined what might transpire if he awoke to find me, Manon Lapaine, the nurse touching his naked flesh. So I rose to my feet to leave him.

No one was more bewildered than I when the hand I had dropped rose up again and landed authoritatively on my thigh. Immediately this fifth cellar did not seem so cold anymore! I am sure I never blushed more brightly in my life than at that moment. Not only conventional decorum dictated this was improper; because it was _me, _I was flustered and feeling ill. I, the unmarried spinster who would never bear children and therefore would never know a man . . .

"Oh God," he murmured in his daze, "just this once let me believe that it's true . . ." And his hand moved slowly up my skirt, with the careful dexterity of those hands that coaxed charming melodies from the unyielding strings of violins. I gasped, my stomach turning in shock, embarrassment, disgust, and—and a little pleasure. I sank down to the floor again, biting my lip hard, telling myself this was improper and disgusting. What did it matter that I had been inexorably attracted to the masked man who had played the violin through the partition of my room? This ugly, ugly man, who beyond his many vices was a brilliant mind and soul—who had saved my life? He would never know I had wept over his suffering as a merciful woman should and wanted to assuage his pain.

"To . . . know," he muttered nonsensically, "to know what all men know—" He gritted his teeth savagely. His breaths were short and unhappy, and one little sob shook his entire frame. "I could have been good," he whispered, "if a woman had . . ." He fell back into silent, tear-soaked reverie, shuddering and pawing at the bedding in aggregate despair.

I had no choice; the nurse could not bear this much suffering; and the woman could not leave someone she admired to the hell of his loneliness. Fully understanding in his drugged state he would no memory of this, I placed my hand on top of his, hoping to spread my warmth to his cold fingers.

He gasped and shook a bit, as if unable to believe, even in his dreams, that someone might want to touch him. Wordless murmurs escaped his lips and the glaze upon his eyes now suggested more than a little pleasure. He took my hand and, trembling, turned himself over, now lying on his back. He resettled my hand in the center of his chest and then was still. His eyes closed. I saw the jungle of blue-green veins popping up underneath his milky, translucent skin. There were scars on his chest, too—the deep remains of lashings crossed onto his rounded shoulders. There were deeper, lighter scars that looked almost like knife wounds—not serious, almost like surgical scars. They made me think of the soft, light lines spread out over both his knuckles and the fingers that, I had decided, had all once been broken. There was one of these scars that began on his low stomach and went on beyond his trousers.

His body was cold, so cold, and his face was as ugly as might be imagined. And yet, it was not such a hardship to leave my hand in the center of his chest, if it kept him from suffering more that night. Was I not duty-bound to bring comfort to this man, the duty of repaid debt as well as that of the nurse—one caught up, against her will, in the strange background of this fiend named Erik? The sputtering oil lamp in my hand, I bent down cautiously over the bed.

Had I in that moment resolved to kiss him? Part of me surely wanted to, if only on the forehead of that death-mask. At the last moment, though, it was the smell of death that repelled me, and I settled for patting my hand once more on his chest. Soon the oil of the lamp finally sloshed over the flame, and it was in sudden darkness that told my beating heart that this was the end. I had seen what I had been meant to see. So it was off once more, imagining the new cuts of morphine-induced fob would scab over soon and leave only scars to tell the tale of this night.


	8. Chapter 8

8.

The next thing I knew, I was lounging uncomfortably in the red _settée, _peering out through half-cracked eyes on the dark world that was Erik's home.

I saw that the gas lamp had been relit, burning softly, unobtrusively in the corner. Cautiously I looked toward Erik's chamber. Aware that the door was ajar, I carefully rose from my resting position, shivering violently and realizing how very hungry I was.

My bare feet were cold against the stone floor, though the soft Turkish carpet underfoot was, as I paused to look at it, beautiful and somehow reminiscent of those days long ago when I had seen Erik in his cage.

How could I have ever forgotten this, let it be so buried beneath the layers of my unimportant life. As I walked toward his open chamber, I paused a moment, considering what I had almost done the night before. He had saved my life. And now that I understood the origins of Erik—the morphine thief, the murderer, the blasphemer—like a haze of smoke, I could trust him. I lifted my hands to my lips in astonishment as my fingers brushed over them, recalling as I did so how white the skin of his scarred back had been. I giggled—Dear Lord, I had not laughed for so long!—at this improper thought. I peered into the chamber, seeing his pallet neatly made and his torn shirt folded on top of a wooden bureau.

"I mean to change my sleeping arrangements eventually, you know."

I spun around, shocked and embarrassed to find Erik standing a few feet away, his impenetrable glance sweeping over me, unreadable in his black mask.

"Is that so?" I whispered, fearing his rage if he suspected I had disobeyed his wishes.

"I intend to make a raised dais of red and black and _sleep in a coffin._"

I gasped a little, dropping my eyes. As far as I could tell, he was amused by my shock moving his hands from his long sides to cross over his chest as he looked down from his lofty height. I noticed without his black cloak he seemed less ghost-like. He was wearing a black silk waistcoat and a blood-red cravat over a pristine white shirt. I realized how grimy I must look in my woolen nurse's dress, feet bare.

"What is it?" he asked suddenly, his grey-gold eyes sweeping over me in icy curiosity.

"Nothing." I looked up from my dirty vestment to the dark crimson of his cravat, imagining how lovingly his long white fingers, pale as champagne flutes, had crafted such an elegant bow.

"You must be hungry," he stated abruptly, fishing an antique pocket watch from his waistcoat. He peered at it almost impatiently, then looked into my face for confirmation.

I nodded. "But I do not wish—to intrude, Erik."

He laughed in his short, harsh way. "I can hardly believe that, Mademoiselle. You did force yourself into my company and mercy."

"That does not mean you have to feed me," I retorted pointlessly.

I stared stubbornly at his polished black leather shoes. At length I ventured to lift my gaze to his face. The expression was of great amusement. "Doesn't it, though?" he murmured.

My lack of response seemed to puzzle him. "Aren't you well, Mademoiselle? Yes, I realize we are none of us very well at the moment!" he snapped. "Did you not sleep?"

"I d-did," I managed. "How did you sleep?"

His gaze shifted to the wall behind me, his hands restlessly untucking themselves from his pockets. "I only require a few hours' sleep. Surely you recall."

"Indeed."

Silence. I imagined with sorrow how high his wall of pride was fashioned, that he would not even admit to himself those moments when his human soul penetrated through. I did not know him that well, but it seemed to me that the memories, the ugliness he believed was his sin . .. He hid it with hardness and talent, which he believed were his salvation. But I had seen him, I had heard him.

"Well, come with me," he interrupted. "It won't do for you to stand there all day staring at my shoes." There was a hard edge at the bottom of his voice.

He led me through his half-completed house. I found it was no lighter in the morning than it had been at night, due to the fact that we were five levels underground. I had a sudden stab of claustrophobia, of disorientation as I considered my fate. My throat was still tight from the day's near-strangulation.

"Erik, what time is it?" We entered a small room, something of a parlor tucked back in the limestone.

He glanced back at me as he ducked, missing the low rock ceiling. "Seven o'clock," he replied, turning a chair to its upright position and dusting it off with a handkerchief.

"Please sit," he offered by way of command. I did as he asked, watching curiosly as he knelt by a great brass object. It looked—well, it looked like a Russian samovar. Could that be it? It appeared I was right, for he removed a delicate porcelain cup and handed it to me. Inside waw a brownish liquid I knew to be tea. "Thank you." I cupped my hands, grateful for the warmth.

"You are familiar with tea?"

"Yes," I replied, sipping the tea.

"That—that is surprising," he declared. He stared at the tea cup in his own bony hands, then lifted it to his mouth. I watched in slight fascination as his thin lips curled upon the porcelain, wondering if the mask at all hindered his movements.

"I have news for you, Mademoiselle," he recommenced, putting the tea down upon a table near his bent knees.

"Yes?"

"Paris has surrendered."

I looked up. He was emotionless, gazing into his tea cup. "And, now what happens?"

He shrugged. Somehow he made such a blasé reaction look cultivated and natural, fluid. I was suddenly aware of the gestures of a lonely man.

"Any number of things," he replied coldly. "Probably, nothing at all, immediately."

I sighed. "Nothing at all?"

"Oh, things will be pleasant enough for _you _soon enough," he assured me with sharp derision. "You may have to become a German citizen in the process."

"Won't you?"

He smiled abruptly, secretly. "If I've managed this long without being subject to their petty nationalism, I won't start now."

"But aren't you subject to them? You said yourself you've become a prisoner in your own home."

"At least I'll always have my own free will," he murmured. "No one shall ever be Erik's master."

"Well," I ventured cautiously, "what is to be done with me?"

He turned sharply. "In due time, I should imagine I can arrange for you to be smuggled out to Belgium—and then to England."

"England? Would that be necessary?"

He glared in the superior way of his that made one feel absolutely low. "You are, after all, being blamed for the murder of a military man of some rank. It will not be as simple as allowing you to walk out into the city."

I nodded. "You are right."

"Of course I am." He placed the cup on the table with a jarring clang. He rose. "Good day to you, Mademoiselle."

"Wait!" I cried, reaching for his arm. He pulled away, his upper lip curling in distrust. "You can't just leave now. We're down here, and—and you can't pretend that I . . . don't exist."

"I have other business to attend to," he exclaimed, dragging back from me in a way that was almost like the desperation of that day in the cage, but much more irate. His gold eyes blazed orange.

"But I, I have no business of my own," I said sadly.

"Then you should not have come down here!" he snarled, eyes livid. "It is not _my _business to entertain you."

"All I want is to talk."

"Talk?" he retorted. "There is nothing I have to say to a convent spinster like yourself, and doubtless you have nothing I would care to hear!"

I burned at his emphasis of "spinster." "So what will you do, Erik? Retreat to yoru little hole and yourself full of morphine? Will you wall yourself in and seep in your hatred, meditate on your own superiority?"

His face was like a white light, beaming, contorted in anger; his fists clenched and trembled. His teeth were revealed, sharp against the smoothness of his shaven chin—what a time to realize his skin was smooth, hairless . . .

His breath suddenly seemed like the roaring of the ocean, harsh, ready to explode. I could perceive, like a trail in snow, a bulging vein on the side of his throat—or was it a scar?

"I have never struck a woman before," he growled. "Do not make this the first time."

At that moment, the top button on his black waistcoat popped up, flew into the air, and hit my shoulder. It was only a tiny pressure, unnoticeable really, but I watched it strike me and then fall.

And inexplicably, I burst into tears.

It occurred to me I hadn't wept since the night I had heard the war declared. I wanted to leave the room, but Erik blocked the exit. So I turned away, buried my face in my grimy hands, and fell upon the hard chair.

_Jean, Jean, _I wondered, _where are you? _My bare feet were cold, writhing on the dirty floor. I felt sick, though whether it was from hunger or emotion I could not tell. My hands were so dirty, so dirty—I could imagine the grime mixing with my tears and running down my face like a whore's makeup smeared after a hot evening. Well, that was that—this was how Despair felt. Surely there was—

I had passed out! I had passed out on that hard chair at the bottom of the world, with a murdere who hated me.

I stretched a moment in silence, feeling slowly rushing back into my joints. I shook my head, my unwashed hair thick and sticking to my brow. As I moved, I saw next to me was a silver tray, worked in strange, foreign designs. On it was a small bit of bread and a teacup full of wine.

Wine from the stocks belonging to the military above, according to my tastebuds. But it was filling. Revived, I got to my feet and considered my next action. There wasn't much to consider: I wouldn't go back up; they'd surely arrest me for the murder of Collier, if not kill me on the spot. I would not be able to leave until the danger was past, which would not be until the deadlock of surrender had resolved itself. The only thing to do was stay alive, so I might one day be reunited with Jean. To stay alive was to keep eating, and to do that, I had to make certain Erik would continue to feed me.

His door was closed, but from within I heard the sound of a pipe organ being played. I stopped a moment to listen, absorbed in his artistry as I had been upon hearing him before. If only he would sing. The best chance at joy in my life was to hear him sing.

I knocked with a trembling fist. His mask seemed lighter than before, as if the whiteness of his face had been absorbed into its fabric. I remembered what was behind it. I knew I was not the most wretched being alive.

"You should be asleep."

"Thank you for the food."

He seemed to shake his head, not opening the door further. His thin frame did not fit all the way through, though I could see his waistcoat was unbuttoned. I followed the buttons on his white shirt to his collar, devoid of cravat; his throat was visible, the outline of his Adam's apple suddenly discernible.

"My temper—I—"

"You never wanted this. I know it's an intrusion, but I believe you must be patient just some time more."

He cleared his throat. "What is it you want of me?"

The grey in his eyes glittered, as if lit from some other source than the oil lamp behind me. What did I want of him? "I don't suppose there is much to occupy me here."

"I'm afraid not. I have a few books . . ."

"Then what do _you _do to stay sane?"

"Occasionally," he hazarded, "I'm able to venture outside. I have my music . . ."

"And you would talk to me . . . sometimes?"

He laughed his mirthless laugh. "What are you so desperate to know?"

"Your eyes," I whispered; "they hold great mysteries. I want to know them."

"My eyes . . ." He looked down, the intensity of the grey amid the gold transferring to my feet. "God, your feet!" he cried.

"What about them?"

"They must be cold!"

A ghostly smile formed on my lips. "That's hardly important."

"But it is," he whispered. He looked up, swirling gold and grey making up the whole of his being. "Have you not once, Manon Lapaine, ever wondered what was behind this mask?" His voice was harsh and yet quiet.

I said, "No." He inhaled incredulously. "I know. I've seen."

He moved back as if struck, one hand clasping his heart, the other flailing at his mask. "How—how is that possible?"

"You were the man in the cage. I was only a child—"

"No!" he cried, shaking his head.

"It's true. And it doesn't matter."

He gasped. "You've seen—seen—me?" He shuddered. "Are you not repulsed!"He trembled for a moment, his face pressed against the door. "I can't—I can't—" It was evident I had shaken him badly. Had I been able to see his face, I'm sure the lines above his sunken sockets wuld have in tortured pain.

"I can't talk about this," he managed. "Excuse me."

**Author's Note:**

First off, I want to express my gratitude to everyone who has been reading and reviewing, especially my returning readers (**Chantal, Immok, Pertie, HD Kingsbury, Maidenhair**). I know this isn't the shortest nor the easiest story to get through. Reading your reviews is very nice for a poor writer's ego. To answer a few questions … **Lady Karol **asked, as I had written this story awhile ago, if it was completed and if I was making any changes in it. Yes, the story was completed many years ago. However, I am changing parts of it as I post it. I am trying to peel myself away from Kay a little, as at the time I was taking some of her ideas as canon. I am also making Erik and Manon's relationship a little more platonic than it was in the earlier version. **Pertie **mentioned she would have liked for Manon to have kissed Erik. That is what she did in the earlier version. I decided to change it for reasons of character, as I felt that was a bit forward for Manon at this point in time.

Many readers seem to express surprise that "Scars" has fewer reviews than they would have expected. Might I humbly suggest that those who enjoy the story recommend it to their friends?  I am hoping to be able to take a look at all of your work, as I am flattered by the fact that you continue to read. Feel free to look at my other stories if you are curious. "Debt to Aretino" only has 2 reviews!

Finally, this is very much off-topic, but do any of you enjoy _Batman Begins _fic? I have a story I'd like someone to beta.

The next chapter should be up soon!


	9. Chapter 9

9.

"Who are you, Erik?"

He turned slightly, his long hands still wrapped around the warmth of his porcelain cup as he poured tea from the samovar.

"What does that matter?" he asked derisively. "I have owned many names and identities."

I regarded him silently for a moment, attempting to convince myself it was interest glowing in his grey-gold eyes and not annoyance. "Such as?"

There seemed to be a glint of satisfaction when he answered. "I have been and seen things you could not imagine."

"You place little faith in my imagination. I know that you have been a musician, scholar, and traveler. Do you wear more guises than those?"

He smiled. I watched his clay fingers mold over the lip of his cup, the pale light gleaming in the dark hollows beneath his mask. Shadows gathered there. "Mademoiselle, I have been the right hand of the Shah of Persia, his court magician who performed skill unparalleled and feats of slight of hand so beguiling they debated for weeks whether it was sorcery or _legerdemain._" He had set down his cup and was staring at his palms. He bent each long finger in succession into the flesh of his hand until a fist was made. "But that did not last."

"No?" I asked softly.

"You see, nothing lasts," he whispered distantly. "Not even the soul."

I shook my head. "What you are suggesting is blasphemy."

"Is it?" he hissed. "You ask me who I am, yet you have no stomach to hear my answers."

"So you are Erik the heretic? Erik the magician? The thief? The . . . murderer?"

His eyes did not move from his trembling fist. "You are wise to catalogue my sins."

"Erik the victim?"

"Never a victim!" he suddenly roared, glaring at me with barely contained passion.

"But," I murmured, wondering if he was going to become angry and want to kill me, "is that not what you were, many years ago in the cage?"

He reeled as if struck. "Do not speak of that!" His white lips grew all the whiter from repressed rage as he sought to control his aggression beneath the hardened black mask.

"You could not have been there of your own free will," I observed. "Will you not tell me—?"

"No," he growled, both hands creasing over his masked face. "I shall tell no one of that time." I noted he was breathing harshly, that I was deliberately provoking him. After spending a fortnight hardly saying a word, leaving him his solitude as I darned stockings and listened, when he thought I was asleep, to his hushed and bitter sighs, I sought an outlet for all that I had witnessed the first night. Somehow I was compelled to take up his arm, press my thumb against his veins, already destroyed by morphine. Somehow I was possessed to wish I could feel the sockets that served as his eyes, to understand if they were flesh or merely bone.

"Don't you understand?" I asked. "I have _seen _you. And I am not afraid."

"You should be," he murmured with a diabolical laugh from behind his hands.

"Erik . . ."

"Why do you not tell me of yourself?" he suddenly interrupted. His voice had risen back to the disinterested flat line he used when making business deals. If only he would play his violin. "Who is Manon Lapaine?"

Unexpected as his request was, I was somewhat pleased by the simple and irrational utterance of my Christian name. He had called me "Manon" the day Collier had tried to strangle me, the day . . . Erik had saved my life . . .

"Not nearly so grand a person as you," I murmured.

"Ah, but more devout, I think."

I shrugged, and his irritated look led me to believe he found me to be too blasé.

"I have lived in a limited sphere, compared to some. My life, I suppose, has had little impact on the world as a whole."

He looked up, the gold in his hawk-like eyes piercing though subtle. "you are a nurse. Surely your contribution on that account cannot be ignored."

"It is not as heroic as it appears, nursing," I concluded. "Besides, I do it to be of use, not out of any calling."

"That's not true," he stated plainly.

"Well, perhaps I want more." I smiled. "Oh, I know I'm selfish, Erik. What could be more fulfilling than the saving of lives? But there were so many more I could not save. Babette, Collier—"

"That was not your fault," Erik said with sudden anger. "You survive, Mademoiselle."

"Survive to what? I'm thirty-two years old, Erik. I should have married long ago." I saw his hand tighten around his porcelain cup. "I'll never have children . . ."

"I understand that you miss your brother," Erik responded, "and I understand these conditions are not what you are accustomed to, but you need not lament your petty life's shortcomings." There was a sharp edge of despair to his voice, like a broken mirror. Somehow I could see a shard of glass creeping into the fleshy part of his thumb. "You do not seem to realize—"

"What color are my eyes, Erik?"

"What?"

I stood up and moved to where he was sitting. I bent over to look at him. He rose back in the chair in surprise, his white hands creeping back like startled spiders, the red of his cravat brushing against the pale of his shirt. "My eyes—are they hazel or brown?"

"What?" he repeated dumbly as I transfixed him with my gaze. I peered into the tiny dots of color inside the black, equally silver as they were brass, fading in and out like ripples in a puddle.

"Don't look at me!" he commanded, tearing away, leaning over the chair to keep his balance.

I touched my throat as a way of regaining control. "I'm sorry," I said. "I really—must be going mad. I'm sorry . . ."

"The Arab women, the women in Persia," he murmured. "They hated my eyes. As if someone had cut out my skull and imprisoned gold and silver within." He sighed. "I—I do not like to be looked at, Mademoiselle."

"I'm sorry."

"They're brown," he said.

_What does _Charivari _tell you, _he had asked me. I was still too shocked to have the paper within my hands to formulate a reply.

"Erik . . . really . . .?"

"Go on, read it," he said irritatedly. 'I haven't had a chance to look at it yet."

"You must tell me how you get a hold of these things. Newspapers, food, your books—"

"I would never neglect my books," he interrupted, pressing his pale hand against the spines of several dusty volumes, all of which I had opened and put down again in the course of the month of February we had spent together. All of his books were either in foreign languages or impossibly complex.

"But how? You don't seem to realize how difficult these things are to obtain. The army above is starving and you—"

"I've never believed in their insignificant squabbles," he said with distaste, "and so I see myself free to exploit what connections I've made." He shook his head, his hands automatically clasping the ties on the back of his mask. "Countries mean so much—where one comes from is of such importance. Why is that, Mademoiselle?" Sensing he did not expect an answer, I said nothing. "Would you believe that I am French, born of two French parents? And still they would accuse me of spying."

"You must admit, the fact that you know so many languages, it's hard to place you."

He smiled. "You can be very logically-minded on occasion."

"Yes, but please tell me how you are coming upon such extraordinary provisions."

He made a harsh, derisive sound. "I do not need to explain myself to you. I keep you alive, don't I?"

"Then I shall have to believe the worst," I exclaimed.

"Isn't that always what you believe of a man in a mask? He's never to be trusted." He lifted the paper from my hands. "Your brother believes that, doesn't he?" I looked down. "Toli appears to be alive and well."

"You needn't act so superior," I muttered. "You know I owe you my life many tiems over; how can I repay your for a debt? I feed you morphine as a thanks."

"No one has ever been fair in life to me," he replied softly, turning away. "I never imagined you to be any different." He stood and turned until I could only see the high expanse of his back and shoulders, encased in black silk, remarkably well-maintained. I studied his thin, frail-looking frame that was nonetheless capable of dispatching a grown man. How awkward, how lonely he looked. His half-finished house, draped in ghostly cloth and books. He had still never given me admittance to his chamber, that secret room that contained his sheaves of paper and his violin and countless other treasures he would nto share with me—just as he would not share himself with me.

This month had been terribly and unendurably long. It was so cold, these five levels below the ground; I soon took to wearing some of Erik's cloaks and his mannish socks, much to his chagrin. Yes, the embarrassment between two modest but hungry members of the opposite sex had always been there. Some nights I meditated on my compromising position—he could have taken me and then murdered me with his Punjab lasso—and wondered if I was mad to trust this man. Yet, he shunned contact; and if he ever thought of me carnally, he never expressed it in a way to give me any compunction.

No, he was always exceedingly polite, even when I knew I annoyed him, my attempts to entertain myself exasperating him, my consumption of food irritating him when he ate so little. It was stifling—and yet, his presence was comforting. I knew that there was no one on earth, save Jean, with whom I could have endured this enforced isolation. Erik was mysterious, puzzling, fascinating—and though he tried to conceal it, in his sharp and mincing movements, I knew he was still lonely. I could only hope . . .

"You are not too afflicted with my presence, I hope," he said suddenly. "I understand your gratitude would overshadow any other considerations. But I do not wish to feel the jailer—I happen not to wish to be beholden, with my rudimentary moral sense . . ."

He looked at me at last. I could not, in the light, distinguish the hollows in Erik's eyes from the mask. "All I wanted to know," I said, "was where you were receiving your things."

I flatter myself into thinking my eyes were as gently teasing as I meant my words to be. I could only conjecture as to whether he understood my intent. But as it was, he turned back to me, handing _Charivari _from his pure pearl hands to mine, reddened with work.

"I have a man I employ to purchase certain things for me."

"You mean a servant."

"If you must use such common language."

"You must pay him a lot."

There was almost delight in his face. "How well you understand the world sometimes. There is hope for you yet, Mademoiselle."

**Author's Note **

Sorry, guys, for the short chapter. Don't worry, the next one will be better. I'm having to do a lot of reading lately. Thanks again to the reviewers. **Pertie: **yes, what Manon and Erik have isn't a conventional fluff relationship. **HDKingsbury, **thanks for getting through the entire story. And I am pleased to hear that the nightmare scene was effective. **OreWaTensai, **you don't know how happy it makes me when you say Manon is not a Mary Sue. **Nadiil, **I hope this update was soon enough. I'll try to be better next time. **MadLizzy, **thanks for reading all the story in such a short time. **Immok, **thanks for your comments as always. Thanks to **Mademoiselle Phantom, Faust, **and **Masters of Night **for reviewing.


	10. Chapter 10

10.

There wasn't much news in _Charivari. _Paris was the same frozen place it had been when the war began. Peace was supposed to be an objective; the Prussian representative had been admitted in the Parisian Assembly. But bureaucracy moved so slowly. Relieved as I was to see Jean alive, I was alarmed to read his advocating a revolution.

Erik, however, was less nervous. "People are simply hungry and cold. They will follow whoever gives them hope. I do not believe you need to fear for your brother, Mademoiselle."

"But what would revolution mean for us, Erik?"

He shook his head. "No more and no less. I will simply wait for tensions to die down and then proceed with our original plan."

"Smuggle me to England."

"That is the objective. Within a week," he prophesized, "this ridiculous nonsense will blow over."

Ah, but he was wrong. It was rare for Erik to be wrong, but little did he know that the débacle would last another month.

I knew, better than anyone, that Erik's music was, above all else, his main absorption and one of the prime reasons he was still alive. I thought of the skull-head in the filthy cage, his sad eyes leaking and his manacled hands bleeding from the exertion of his violin. Remembering this, and the metaphysical connection we had shared the night he had played, I was in no doubt that, while he kept it secret, his music he was practicing. At night, when he thought I was asleep, I would hear snatches of it. More often now it was pipe organ and not violin, though he had divulged he planned someday to purchase a cottage piano and place it in the as-yet-incomplete parlor.

So when I questioned him about it in March of that year, he was much more forthcoming than I had imagined. "What are you composing?" I asked with considerable nonchalance, despite the knowledge he would brutally cast aside my curiosity.

"My life's work," he answered succinctly, with that strangely reassuring look in the gold of his eyes. "My opera."

"I thought you disdained the overly romantic genre of _grand opéra." _

"Oh, you misunderstand me," he replied with that misanthropic superiority that so often made him unapproachable. "I have faith in the institution of opera, Mademoiselle." He was toying with the immaculate cuffs of his sleeves, his fingers moving back and forth across the black smear of his waistcoat, smooth aside from the wrinkles around his black pearly buttons. "_Fidelio, _for example. That was the only opera Beethoven wrote; did you know that?"

I think he took some satisfaction when I shook my head. "You see, the great men only had one great opera in them. The same is true for me." He stood up abruptly, leaning against his chair as sudden passion blazed in his eyes. "Mind you, I will put all those who have come before me to shame." His lip trembled with derision. "These petty sentimentalists that pose for art now . . ." his fist clenched. "I will sear them all with my truth, with my passion."

"You seek to displace the great masters from a hole in the ground?"

His eyes flashed livid, almost supernaturally, "I helped build this hole, Mademoiselle—when this war is over, I will find Garnier himself and show him the finishing plans for this monolith offspring. Do you think it was by accident I situated myself here?"

Delighted to have finally found the source of his passions, I goaded him on. "What is this opera that will make such a mockery of men?"

His hand rose into the air with dizzying, mesmerizing grace: an unexpected, ephemeral movement. "_Don Juan Triumphant!" _

I had heard tales in my youth—fairy stories if opposition to my religious teachings—of a man who spoke things so beautifully that he had but to speak their name and women would give themselves to him. Erik need only say the name of the most famous libertine in the world and he was poised to conquer as Don Juan had. Immediate sensuality had broken through his austerity, and we remained in awe of it for several moments, his hand still raised in triumph.

I breathed, still, enraptured. There was to him a quality of the absurd—the stick-thinness of his body, the contrasting richness of his vestment, that pooled with the pathos and sensivity in such unseeming forms as his dry, small lips, or his clipped fingernails. He was, I knew, the most fascinating person I would ever meet, and I was sure that God had not put me in this position for no reason.

"May I see the score?" I asked.

"What?" He awoke as if from sleep.

"May I see it?"

"Can you read music?"

"A little."

He stared at me. I wondered what marvelous thoughts were passing through his head, what his genius was making of the situation. He had the unnerving quality of seeming to see through all guiles.

"You have never seen my chamber," he stated. I was saved from the necessity of lying as he gracefully backed out of the room, motioning with his skeletal hand. He opened his chamber door slowly, as if still debating whether he would allow me to enter.

There was his ignored pallet in the corner of the room, tucked away behind a bureau and a chair. There was the massive pipe organ and by it, a bench. Upon the organ were sheaves of music, and a wastebasket below filled overflowing with them. There were books in various piles, interspersed with exotic instruments and more leaves of paper. ON the bureau was a human skull and behind it, a tapestry that said simply, "_Dies irea._"

"I have plans, of course, to embellish upon my living quarters," he prefaced.

"To work it in red and black. Yes, you've mentioned it."

He lifted a leather-bound leaflet from the organ and handed it to me. "_Don Juan Triumphant._"

I studied the notes, rendered in Erik's nervous handwriting. " 'And we two shall be as one, when the stars rise above you as I shall, your heated kisses'—"

He snatched the book back from me, clapping it shut over his chest. "I had no idea you were so well-versed in Russian!"

My hands were still full of the empty manuscript. I imagined Erik was still blushing under his mask. "One of the sisters at the convent was Russian by birth. Her psalms were so accented I had her teach me Russian."

"But the Russians are of the Orthodox Church."

I shrugged. "She was converted."

He shook his head in disgust. "You cannot convert the whole world," he said.

"I have no wish to convert anyone."

He set the manuscript down upon the organ. "Oh hardly," I murmured. "It took me three years of constant study. And I was only guessing on the 'kisses.'"

He seemed to flinch in embarrassment. "Truly, communication remains elusive, Mademoiselle."

"Don Juan should not sing in Russian, you know," I hinted.

His hand clenched. "I will be rewriting the lyrics when it time for it to be performed."

"It looks very complex. Will someone be able to sing it?"

"Oh, it is singable, I assure you. And I will find the woman to sing it." He sighed. "A soprano so pure, so unadulterated, so angelic—she must exist somewhere."

"And your Don Juan?"

"I could listen to half a dozen fat, fearful tenors mangle the part of my great libertine, but there is only one who could do the role justice."

There was a ghostly smile from under the mask. Erik thinks he's Don Juan, I thought.

"Would you sing it, then?" He stared at me blankly. "Or play it? Erik, you know how I enjoy your music. You are such a gifted musician."

"Well—" he began in a tone that could have been embarrassment or smug appreciation.

"Just a few bars," I pleaded. "I can't imagine how those flats sound all in a row."

He regarded me suspiciously, as he had from behind the bars of the cage. "You don't know what you're asking," he whispered.

"What could be dangerous about music?"

For a moment, it seemed as though there was firelight reflected in his eyes. That was impossible; there was no fire in the room.

"I suppose a few bars would be relatively harmless. If you are so determined to hear it."

"I don't think I'd ever again have the opportunity to hear a master play."

He cleared his throat. "You are, after all, quite right."

He seated himself on the organ bench, rearranging the manuscript with his thin, dexterous fingers. I moved toward the corner. "May I sit in this chair?"

"Of course, forgive me," he murmured, leaping up to assist me.

"That's not necessary, Erik."

He stared, frozen in unwanted gallantry; his disappointment with humanity confirmed.

Icily he reseated himself, his long coattails floating. He placed his long, skeletal fingers upon the bone-white keys and began to play.

The first notes, I must confess, startled me, for they were like no music I had ever heard before. A more violent, passionate sound that current aesthetics would have banished. Then I was aware of nothing but the pounding of my heart, and the distinct feeling of heat flushing my face. I saw Erik's shoulders heaving over the mellifluous organ, as if heat itself was issuing like steam from his fingertips. Such burning I had never before felt, even near to the warm gas lamps. The warmth filled my head with an uncaring sweetness and such visions passed my eyes as I will not repeat for common decency. _This must be how morphine felt_, I realized later.

I was swept away, made dumb by the shimmering heat, feeling as though this music was mine and that I was part of it. There was nothing else in the universe that mattered or even existed. There was only this music . . .

Abruptly it stopped. I was only aware because I felt my heart had likewise stopped. Where was that sweet perfume? I wondered groggily. Where was that warmth? Several minutes passed before I realized Erik had stopped playing and was sitting in silence.

My hair had come undone and was tumbled about my shoulders, wild and uncouth. With a start, I noted my collar had been unbuttoned, and three inches of skin felt the coldness of the air with shame. I gasped, noting my breathing was frenzied, that I was thrust forward in my chair.

My breathing was not the only ragged sound in the otherwise silent room. Erik was hunched over the keyboard, his shoulders painfully pitched, as if at some unnatural angle. His waistcoat lay discarded, the blood-red cravat at his feet. His thin body was covered only by his silk shirt, his suspenders dangling uselessly at his sides.

Suddenly, he stood. The bench flew back at his heels as if possessed. The crash as it resounded on the floor was shattering, incredible. Almost the sound of bone breaking. He jumped, shuddering, convulsing. Still in a haze, a barely conscious fog, I leaned forward to help him.

He turned toward the door, rushing to it, pressing his outstretched arms against it, his forehead to the wood, panting wildly. I was struck by the grey beauty of his lonely figure. I was still warmed by his echoing notes, still enchanted by his sorrow and passion. I rose, walking to him. He did not flinch. As I approached, he made no move. I found myself irresistibly drawn to his thin, lithe back, his vertebrae and shoulder blades visible through the thinness of his shirt. My hands moved up to touch the tense muscles of his back.

"No!" he shouted, spinning around to pinion my wrists in his cold hands. I looked to the terrified eyes beyond the mask, the yellow swirling with tears, his sockets strained with hidden veins. He shuddered, dropped my hands, and disappeared through the door.

For long moments I just stood, my hands where he had left them, trying to understand why I had wanted to touch him so badly. Why he had reacted so violently. Left alone in his chamber, I could have ransacked his music, purged his Don Juan, but I sat in shock. What was that? I wondered. Was that intensity Erik's cross, which he bore alone inside the prison of his head? No wonder, I thought, that he did not fear death. Death was silence compared to that furnace he could not bestow on another.

**Author's Note **

Forgive me, gentle readers, for the long span of time since the last update. As you may have surmised, I'm now a Jonathan Crane fanatic (in part because some of his traits remind me of Erik's) and school has been insane. I will, however, update the rest of this story and hopefully complete it before the end of the year.

Thank you for the reviews. I didn't realize until now I had nearly 50. Can we make it 60 before the next update? Thank you **wanderingchild, Immok, Miss Ann Thorpe, Nadiil, stineblicher **and **Faust **for your kind words. **Pertie, **I hope this chapter sheds more light on the nature of Erik and Manon's relationship—or at least makes it more interesting. **HDKingsbury, **I'm glad you like Manon was well as Erik. I hope she'll hold your interest. **MadLizzy, **I'm intrigued at your observation about the lair—and you're right, it's very much the opposite of the ALW lair. My Phantom worries about setting things on fire. ;-) Finally, **awoman, **I'm unclear what you mean by formatting, but please feel free to explain that further.

Until the next chapter, folks!


	11. Chapter 11

11.

"I cannot begin to explain." His voice was dead, dull. He had reentered his chamber, at least an hour later, retrieving his clothing anxiously. He shooed me out with unconcealed agitation. "I cannot apologize. You must think me monstrous."

"No," I said, looking up. My hand rose uncomfortably to my throat. "I don't know what to think, Erik."

He shook his head derisively. "Do not mock me, Mademoiselle!"

Mademoiselle. He did not call me Manon.

"I do not mock you: your music is brilliant, as you must know, but not for this world."

He glared; yellow on black. "I will never play _Don Juan _again as long as I live." He spun around angrily. "It is fortunate, indeed, then that the time has arrived for your departure."

My hands clenched. "W-what?"

He cleared his throat, paced. "You have been ignorant; your brother's _Charivari _has been silent of late, but I have heard things."

"What have you heard?"

"Revolution, Mademoiselle," he said, his golden eyes gleaming. "Paris is about to vomit forth her second revolution, and we will be in the middle of it."

"But we surrendered to the Germans," I murmured. "You said—"

"They call themselves the Provincial Government of the Third Republic, and they will take the Opéra within days, I predict . . . civil war, Mademoiselle."

I considered for a moment. I had known terror and uncertainty for so long. But within Erik's crypt I had known certain peace, sometimes excitement and sometimes hope, for the first time I had seen Jean. Now, to have it destroyed, even for my own safety . . .

"Why did you conceal this from me?" I lashed out.

He turned away. "Conceal? I concealed nothing . . . Do you not have such an attachment to your life as I thought?"

"When did you begin to care about my life, Erik?" He stopped, astonished. "I did not mean that," I amended. "You have been . . . very kind to me," I said, thinking about the warmth of his lips, wanting him, wishing he wanted me . . .

"Yes," he murmured, coming to stand beside me. "And now, Mademoiselle, let me do you one more kindness."

I sighed. I did not deserve him. I had to relinquish him. "What must I do?"

"Tomorrow," he said gravely, "I will escort you out of the Opéra. You must promise to obey me explicitly. Do you understand?" I nodded. "There will be a house on the opposite street with a broken window. You will run to it when instructed. Inside is a man I have paid to smuggle you to Belgium and then to England. He is fearful and should give you no trouble, but you must take the remainder of the morphine and give it to him only when he delivers you safely."

I stared deliberately at my hands. He hated people and yet he risked so much to save me. I knew he did not love me but acted out of some dormant compassion in his long-neglected heart. Oh, Erik: why did you have to be so good, underneath it all?

"Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Then what is wrong?"

"Nothing," I lied.

"Then you will be ready tomorrow?"

I grabbed his arm, even as he recoiled. "Thank you," I whispered, releasing him and leaving the room.

I slept that night. I tried to keep the enormity from my mind. I had grown frightened to live without the ever watchful phantom behind me. I knew I would miss him, but that he would go back to his lonely existence immediately. He had given me my life: and I only wanted to be a small part of his.

With his superior knowledge of the Opéra, in its half-completed shelter, navigating to an obscure corner where the Communards would not be watching was relatively easy. I was required to crawl through unfinished pillars of masonry and tiny corridors, but it was nothing beyond my state of mind. I had no possessions save my clothes and the morphine I had been instructed to keep, and a small scrap of parchment with "ERIK" written on it to convince the smuggler I was indeed the one bought and paid for.

Paris was still cold, choked in smoke and fog; the distant sound of cannons firing convinced me Erik's predictions, this time, were right. The snow was more a muddy brown mire, and not a soul was seen.

Erik stood before me, a ghost yet, all in black, his fingers pale, his eyes golden-grey, his clothing masking the scars on his body as completely as the mask hid his face. But I had seen them both, and I would not forget.

"Mademoiselle Lapaine," he said, gesturing to the house with the broken window.

"Yes, I know," I said, smiling at him.

He reached for my hand and bowed. "Your servant," he said.

"Thank you for my life." He nodded uncomfortably." I know we are neither of us native Parisians," I said, "but I think this fire has baptized us anew, don't you agree?" He looked at me quizzically, but I merely reached up to his impeccable collar. "Then let me say goodbye in the Parisian way." And I pressed three kisses to the cheeks of his black _papier-mâché _mask, then drew back to look at him.

He was trembling, his yellow eyes gleaming. He was beginning to form a reply, but a shout was heard in the street. I turned to see a mob fleeing as the cannons grew louder.

"Go," Erik urged. "Go, Manon Lapaine!"

And so I ran, not looking back to the strange masked man, until I reached the house with the broken window. That was the last time I saw him.

**Author's note. **

Sorry this one was so short. Hopefully the final chapter will make it worth it. Thank you for your time and reviews.


	12. Epilogue

Epilogue.

I lived to reach Belgium and then England, where I stayed for close to four years. The troubles of 1871 were resolved very soon. The very next day after my flight, as Erik had said, the Commune was declared. Civil war raged throughout March and April, and I found it of supreme irony that the Communards made the Opéra hospital. There would be plenty of morphine for Erik, though I believed the constant surveillance would have forced him to keep to hiding. I later learned the cellars were used during that time for unfortunate prisoners of war. I wondered if Erik ever took pity on them and used his Punjab lasso to rid them of burdensome life.

The Commune fell in late May, and life returned swiftly to normal in France. Paris proved resilient, though I had little desire to return. In England, I met another expatriate, an older man named Jules, and we were married. I thought I would never wed, but my companion was a whimsical man who let me laugh, and expected no children. Even so, we adopted a little English girl, five years old, to whom I became very attached.

I never felt for Jules the way I had felt for Erik, but I believed I led a happy, quiet life. Jules was a financier and clerk, who worked for adequate sums at large companies. Businesses, such as printing shops or theatres. By the time we had returned to France, it was 1875, and I was growing old quickly. Jules knew my passion for sweets, and it wasn't long before I grew very fat. Two years into living in Paris again, I was already going grey. It was by chance only that Jules took work in the offices of Garnier's Opéra, now the grandest opera in Europe, rivaled only by La Scala. I admit my heart was glad, to see Erik's haven so splendid in completion. I wondered if he still lived in his little house on the lake. I convinced myself he had long ago moved on, like my dear brother Jean, whom I never saw again.

But fate is a strange puppet-master, and it happened that my husband died in 1877, leaving Meg and I with no income to support ourselves. I was offered the job of concierge by the Opéra, which I accepted. Meg was a faithful _petit rat _in the company, on her way to the success she would later find in marriage, and I could watch over her. But as Mame Giry (an affectionate title supplied by my husband), I was not prepared for the ghost of Box Five. I recognized the voice at once, and almost laughed at Erik's daring. I knew he could not recognize in the stout, greying old woman the nurse he had once befriended. Rather than reveal his secrets, I played his part.

I was an actor equal to himself, and I was convincing in my role of the superstitious imbecile. The note I recited to the managers was a delightful fabrication of Erik that I pretended to believe in piously. I was delighted my little Meg took to the legend so well, though I took pains to make sure her imagination never ventured _too _close to the truth.

Many nights I would sit near the empty box, aware that Erik was hidden within the architecture somewhere, and hear his laughter, his humming voice. He was still very generous to his willing servant, and once I even caught a glimpse of his silhouette in the _foyer de la danse. _

I was notably disappointed when he fell in love with the trifling Christine Daaé; what business did a man of near fifty have with a girl barely twenty? I hoped it was the angelic quality of her young voice, the beauty of his _Don Juan _paramour, that made him love her. Yes, I was jealous of the unfortunately weak-constitutioned Miss Daaé, but my Meg kept me well-informed on her doings.

And the night Christine Daaé reappeared from the cellars to elope with the youthful Vîcomte Raoul de Chagny, Meg was told some of the ingenue's wild tales. Alone and bold, I took the dangerous path to the underground house. I knew very well that I might be attacked by the ratcatcher, accosted by the Persian, or killed in Erik's torture chamber, but I returned.

I saw the house completed, and my heart swelled from pride. The door, however, to Erik's chamber was not even locked. In the darkness of his coffin he lay, at peace at last, frozen tears still on his uncovered cheeks. He had died before I was able to say goodbye. But I knew his wishes. His fine things I had discreetly taken to my flat; his house I left bare and clean. His coffin I weighted down and sent to the waves, so he would never be found, never again be displayed.

When I think about the winter of 1871, I realize we all had our scars from that dangerous time, but none deeper than Erik's or mine.

Fin

**Author's Note **

Many thanks to you, faithful readers, for getting this far. I hope the twist here at the end wasn't too annoying. Looking at the ending I wrote over 4 years ago, I realize that it is a bit Maupassant-esque. Hmm.

It may interest you to know that this last summer I began writing a new _Phantom _story, called "Origins." This one, as you might imagine, returns to the very beginning of Erik's life. Split into three parts, it tells the story Leroux hinted at, this time from what I hope is a unique perspective: Erik's father's. Stay tuned.

My thanks to you again.


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